Peril

Bob Woodward, Robert Costa

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781982182939
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Biographies
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The transition from President Donald J. Trump to President Joseph R. Biden Jr. stands as one of the most dangerous periods in American history. But as #1 internationally bestselling author Bob Woodward and acclaimed reporter Robert Costa reveal for the first time, it was far more than just a domestic political crisis. Woodward and Costa interviewed more than 200 people at the center of the turmoil, resulting in more than 6, 000 pages of transcripts—and a spellbinding and definitive portrait of a nation on the brink.This classic study of Washington takes readers deep inside the Trump White House, the Biden White House, the 2020 campaign, and the Pentagon and Congress, with eyewitness accounts of what really happened. Intimate scenes are supplemented with never-before-seen material from secret orders, transcripts of confidential calls, diaries, emails, meeting notes and other personal and government records, making Peril an unparalleled history. It is also the first inside look at Biden's presidency as he began his presidency facing the challenges of a lifetime: the continuing deadly pandemic and millions of Americans facing soul-crushing economic pain, all the while navigating a bitter and disabling partisan divide, a world rife with threats, and the hovering, dark shadow of the former president.

ONE

Nearly four years earlier, Joe Biden was knocking around his beach house in Rehoboth, Delaware, the weekend of August 12, 2017, when he caught snatches of President Trump on television. The president was insisting the violent brawls between marching white supremacists and counter-protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, were the fault of both sides.

Speaking before four American flags at his New Jersey golf club, Trump declared there was “hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides.”

Incensed, Biden grabbed the phone and called “Mike D.,” Mike Donilon, his closest political confidant, who at 59 had the look and manner of a neighborhood priest. Gray hair, bushy eyebrows, glasses, hushed voice.

Like Biden, Donilon had grown up in an Irish-Catholic family. His mother was a local union organizer in South Providence, Rhode Island, and his father was president of the school board. Over four decades, he had become Biden’s gut check and a blend of John F. Kennedy’s two key advisers: his younger brother and strategist, Robert F. Kennedy, and Theodore Sorensen, his wordsmith.

Donilon moved to the deck at the back of his house because his cell phone had poor reception inside his Alexandria, Virginia, home.

Jolting videos of white nationalists streamed seemingly nonstop on cable news. Many carried flaming torches and chanted “Jews will not replace us” and the Nazi slogan, “blood and soil.” They marched defiantly onto the campus of the University of Virginia on the eve of the “Unite the Right” rally, protesting the removal of an outsized statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee.

Heather Heyer, a 32-year-old counter-protester, was killed on August 12 as the clashes continued and a self-avowed anti-Semite rammed his Dodge Challenger into a downtown crowd holding signs that read “Love,” “Solidarity” and “Black Lives Matter.”

“I have to speak out on this,” Biden told Donilon. “This is different. This is darker. It is more dangerous. This is really a fundamental threat to the country.”

Donilon could hear the profound alarm in Biden’s voice. Biden was often stirred emotionally and long-winded, but on Charlottesville, he was going on and on, even more than his usual length.

“What’s different about this moment in history is that the American people are going to have to stand up and defend the country’s values and the Constitution because they don’t have a president who is going to do it.”

Biden had never seen anything like Trump’s response, maybe in his lifetime. The president of the United States had given moral equivalency to those who stand against hate and the haters—safe harbor for white supremacists and Nazis who were willing to come out in the open.

“Unprecedented,” he said, using one of his favorite words. “Trump is breathing life into kind of the darkest, worst impulses in the country.”

“They didn’t even bother to cover their faces!” Biden exclaimed. “The reasons they felt they could do it there was because they believed they had the president of the United States in their corner.”

He was not going to sit idle. Could Donilon help him draft something—an article, an op-ed, a speech?

Up until then, Biden, age 74, a full six feet, had been out of office for seven months, after serving eight years as vice president. His hair was snow white and his face weathered by the years.

Biden had been trying to abide by the traditional rule for a previous administration: avoiding public comment on a new president. Let them get their sea legs. But he told Donilon the rule no longer applied.

“I have to speak,” he said. “I need to be a very clear voice.”

Biden argued if people stayed silent, the nation’s civic fabric would grow threadbare, with more terror in the streets. Trump was systemically attacking the courts, the press, and Congress—a vintage move by an autocrat to dismantle institutions constricting his power.

“Okay,” Donilon said. “I’ve got to get writing.” The old Biden was engaging again as if he still held office.

As Donilon went to work, Biden issued a tweet at 6:18 p.m. that Saturday: “There is only one side.”

It was classic Biden—declarative and righteous. And it picked up some traction on social media. But it was hardly a sensation. A former vice president was a fading brand.

Trump would not let go. On August 15, during a press conference at Trump Tower in New York, he maintained “there is blame on both sides” and there were “very fine people on both sides.”

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Drafts flew back and forth between Biden and Donilon.

Donilon mulled over how to convey Biden’s urgency. What was the language? They agreed Biden needed to sound an alarm without sounding hysterical. How could he best confront—to use a phrase Biden had famously whispered after the passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010—this disturbing, “big fucking deal” American moment?

They were looking for a larger theme, even a framing that invoked Biden’s Catholic faith and spirituality. Something visceral, with a values component. Something that captured Biden’s optimism and the nation’s spirit. But what?

Donilon landed on “soul,” a word no one identified with Trump. Biden loved the word. Just right.

Within two weeks, an 816-word piece under Biden’s name ran in The Atlantic, with the headline, “We Are Living Through a Battle for the Soul of This Nation.”

“The crazed, angry faces illuminated by torches. The chants echoing the same anti-Semitic bile heard across Europe in the 1930s,” Biden wrote. “The neo-Nazis, Klansmen, and white supremacists emerging from dark rooms and remote fields and the anonymity of the web into the bright light of day.”

In the aftermath of the march, he wrote, “America’s moral conscience began to stir.”

After the essay ran, there was a new, rising intensity in Biden’s private speeches.

“Who thinks democracy is a given?” Biden asked corporate leaders at a closed event on September 19, 2017. “If you do, think again.”

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Known as Mr. Silent, Donilon was an unusually good listener. Biden aides often forgot Donilon was on conference calls until Biden would wonder, “Mike D., are you there?”

Yes, just taking it all in, trying to think it through, Donilon would say.

But the silence served a purpose—crystallizing Biden’s aspirations. And this time, Donilon felt they had hit on something powerful with “soul.” In speechwriting, sometimes you did, sometimes you did not.

“The battle for the soul of the nation” did not resonate like JFK’s famous inaugural command, “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.” But it asked deeper, more fundamental questions: What is your country? What has it become under Trump?

TWO

Republicans were at a crossroads that summer of 2017, pleased to be holding power across Washington but increasingly unnerved about Trump and his response to Charlottesville. One of them was Paul Ryan, who had been Mitt Romney’s running mate in the 2012 presidential election.

Ryan, a tall, dark-haired Midwesterner, was the opposite of Trump in many ways. He was a devotee of the grueling “P90X” workout regimen, a straitlaced family man, and an insider on Capitol Hill since his early twenties. He had been elected House speaker in October 2015.

Trump’s personality confounded Ryan, who told friends he had never met another human being like him.

Throughout the 2016 campaign, Ryan had been supportive of the Republican nominee, whom most GOP leaders doubted would be able to win. But his support of Trump started to crack that October, when Ryan publicly said he was “sickened” by Trump’s lewd, caught-on-tape comments about women, which were revealed by The Washington Post.

Once Trump won, Ryan was caught off guard. He now had to deal with him. Ryan, as speaker, was second in the line of presidential succession, right behind Vice President Mike Pence. There was no avoiding it.

Ryan began, on his own, to research how to deal with someone who is amoral and transactional. The exercise initially was difficult. Ryan liked to call himself a “policy guy,” but his wonkiness did not extend from the realm of Social Security and Medicare into psychiatry.

Then a wealthy New York doctor and Republican donor called Ryan and said, “You need to understand what narcissistic personality disorder is.”

“What?” Ryan asked.

The doctor sent Ryan a memo and an email with his “thoughts on how to best deal with a person with anti-social personality disorder.” He also sent along hyperlinks to dense articles in The New England Journal of Medicine.

The memo contained material from the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, 10th edition, called “ICD-10.” Ryan studied them for weeks, convinced Trump had the personality disorder.

Ryan’s main takeaway: Do not humiliate Trump in public. Humiliating a narcissist risked real danger, a frantic lashing out if he felt threatened or criticized.

Ryan tested out his research on December 9, 2016. He and his senior aides, including soon-to-be chief of staff Jonathan Burks, arrived at Trump Tower in Manhattan for a transition meeting with the president-elect.

Ryan, Burks and others stepped into the gleaming elevator and said nothing. Burks wondered if the elevator was bugged. Trump had a reputation for secretly recording.

Once upstairs, they were ushered into Trump’s office on the 26th floor. Burks stood up to close the door so the speaker and president-elect could have a private meeting.

“Oh, no, we leave that open,” Trump said.

“Okay,” Burks said, sitting down.

Trump shouted at his longtime administrative assistant, Rhona Graff.

“Rhona! Rhona! Get the coffee. Get the good stuff. It’s Paul Ryan,” Trump bellowed. “We’ve got to get the good stuff for him!”

A parade of Trump people kept strolling in, then walking back out. Steve Bannon, the unkempt conservative strategist who had migrated into Trump’s orbit from Breitbart, a hard-right and anti-Ryan website. Incoming national security adviser Michael Flynn. Ivanka Trump.

Well, this is New York, Burks thought.

Trump nodded as Ryan spoke earnestly about taxes and health care, then looked down at his cell phone, which was ringing. It was Sean Hannity of Fox News. He answered the call as Ryan and his advisers sat silent.

“Yeah, I’m here with Paul,” Trump told Hannity. “Oh? You want to talk with him?”

Trump looked at Ryan then put the call on speakerphone. “Sean, talk to Paul,” he told the host, and Hannity did for about seven minutes.

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The pattern of disjointed behavior continued once Trump became president. Trump kept erupting with erratic decisions and anger about perceived slights.

On April 26, 2017, Ryan got word that Trump was ready to announce that the United States would leave the North American Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA, the pact linking the U.S., Canada and Mexico. Ryan told Trump he risked public humiliation.

“You’re going to crash the stock market,” Ryan warned. Trump pulled back.

A lasting rupture came on August 15, 2017. On a hi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Authors’ Personal Note
• Prologue
• Chapter One
• Chapter Two
• Chapter Three
• Chapter Four
• Chapter Five
• Chapter Six
• Chapter Seven
• Chapter Eight
• Chapter Nine
• Chapter Ten
• Chapter Eleven
• Chapter Twelve
• Chapter Thirteen
• Chapter Fourteen
• Chapter Fifteen
• Chapter Sixteen
• Chapter Seventeen
• Chapter Eighteen
• Chapter Nineteen
• Chapter Twenty
• Chapter Twenty-One
• Chapter Twenty-Two
• Chapter Twenty-Three
• Chapter Twenty-Four
• Chapter Twenty-Five
• Chapter Twenty-Six
• Chapter Twenty-Seven
• Chapter Twenty-Eight
• Chapter Twenty-Nine
• Chapter Thirty
• Chapter Thirty-One
• Chapter Thirty-Two
• Chapter Thirty-Three
• Chapter Thirty-Four
• Chapter Thirty-Five
• Chapter Thirty-Six
• Chapter Thirty-Seven
• Chapter Thirty-Eight
• Chapter Thirty-Nine
• Chapter Forty
• Chapter Forty-One
• Chapter Forty-Two
• Chapter Forty-Three
• Chapter Forty-Four
• Chapter Forty-Five
• Chapter Forty-Six
• Chapter Forty-Seven
• Chapter Forty-Eight
• Chapter Forty-Nine
• Chapter Fifty
• Chapter Fifty-One
• Chapter Fifty-Two
• Chapter Fifty-Three
• Chapter Fifty-Four
• Chapter Fifty-Five
• Chapter Fifty-Six
• Chapter Fifty-Seven
• Chapter Fifty-Eight
• Chapter Fifty-Nine
• Chapter Sixty
• Chapter Sixty-One
• Chapter Sixty-Two
• Chapter Sixty-Three
• Chapter Sixty-Four
• Chapter Sixty-Five
• Chapter Sixty-Six
• Chapter Sixty-Seven
• Chapter Sixty-Eight
• Chapter Sixty-Nine
• Chapter Seventy
• Chapter Seventy-One
• Chapter Seventy-Two
• Epilogue
• Photographs
• Note to Readers
• Acknowledgments
• About the Authors
• Source Notes
• Index
• Photography Credits
• Copyright