Woodward and Costa’s Peril opens with General Milley calling his counterpart, General Li of China, to reassure Li that the U.S. is NOT about to launch an attack. Intelligence services in China, Russia, and Iran were alarmed at the prospect that Trump would attack them in an attempt to stay in power.
Peril is one of those books that you have to occasionally put aside for a few minutes because of the horrors revealed on seemingly every page. There’s the scenes of Trump watching the January 6, 2021 Insurrection while his phone is blowing up with calls from the Capitol begging for assistance. Very disturbing.
And then there’s the strategy of convincing Mike Pence to refuse to certify the results of the Election and throw the contest into the House of Representatives where the Republicans would make Trump the President…again.
Our country, our democracy came very close to disaster in so many ways! Woodward and Costa document the schemes that almost brought our Government down. Scary stuff! GRADE: A
Move over, Stephen King. There’s a new horror book in town and it’s scary as hell.
Jerry, I literally had to put PERIL down at times because what I was reading was overwhelming me! Stephen King never did that to me.
Don’t think it’s over! Trump and his minions have been plotting his return since the day Biden was inaugurated. Now that most red states have passed draconian voter restriction laws and (as in Georgia) have allowed state legislatures to overturn election results they don’t like, I doubt a GOP-controlled state will ever again certify an election won by a Democrat. It’s so depressing…and scary.
Deb, Woodward and Costa are convinced, based on their reporting, that Trump will run in 2024. He’s able to raise millions from his loyal supporters. And, just this weekend, Trump held another of his rallies in Georgia, a key swing state.
This is scary stuff, and the Fascists are winning. What makes the situation almost as sad as it is horrifying is that there’s a lot that can be done to stop them if cowardly scum like Joe Manchin would agree to do away with the filibuster. But noooo, not Joe. He’d rather be bipartisan and hope he can convince ten Republicans to cooperate in their own downfall.
Michael, after reading PERIL, I came away with a sense that unless the Democrats secure the voting process and fight against voter suppression, very Dark Days loom ahead of us.
It’s Another Joe who is making the filibuster abolition less possible.
But he always has been a backroom wheeler-dealer.
Todd, I’m hoping Biden and his team can buy Joe Manchin’s vote.
That rare thing, a suspenseful History Book. And I think we can all pat ourselves on the back. Representative Government had a good run here in the U.S. and in years to come we can look back and be proud of how long we sustained it.
Dan, there were dozens of surprises for me while reading PERIL. I learned Trump contemplated starting a war to stay in power, but I didn’t know Iran was on the list. So many GOP members–like Mitch McConnell who despises Trump–were willing to help him!
(fingers in ears) La la la la la.
Lived it, not ready to read about it. Whatever he thinks now, I think three plus years is a long way away and I don’t think Trump will run again. But then, I didn’t think there was any chance he would win the first time.
Moscow Mitch is (to my mind) worst than Trump, because without his assistance, that sociopathic psycho wouldn’t have gotten anywhere.
Jeff, Woodward and Costa have some revealing quotes about Moscow Mitch and his loathing for Trump. But so many times in PERIL, GOP members help Trump because they believe Trump will help them. Many times, they’re wrong!
Yes, it’s the dogged stupidity that they think Trump must be kidding about his degree of blathering narcissism…perhaps since their own can be reigned in temporarily to suit their own purposes. But, oddly enough, no.
Todd, you’re right. There seems to be no limit to the lengths the GOP will go to win…including enabling Trump!
There is no way I could read this. I can barely read about it. I will probably be gone by democracy’s final demise but my poor grandkid won’t.
Patti, the fight for democracy isn’t over yet. But the Democrats have to use their power to protect the voting process before the GOP completely corrupts it!
The problem, of course, is that neoliberals such as Biden can’t imagine a world where kowtowing to corporate interests Really Does Need to come second, at best, to representing the commonwealth. Surely if we amass larger campaign warchests, that will do the trick! Come on, Man!
Todd, “MONEY is the mother’s milk of politics” as Jesse Unruh quipped three decades ago.
Indeed. But even Unruh knew politics needed more than than just a bank account.
Todd, Unruh echoes the famous quote of Senator Mark Hanna who said in 1895: “There are two things that are important in politics. The first is money and I can’t remember what the second one is.”
Hence, the Gilded Age. And the emergence of the briefly strong Populist Party, the more durable if marginal Socialist Labor Party, the far less marginal Socialist Party, and the seeds of the Prohibition, Progressive and other notable parties, the Single-Taxers, and to say nothing of the various anarchist tendencies in the US…
Money, to repeat, is not enough, and the Democratic Party over the last forty years keep proving this over and over.
Well…the notion that the House would recoronate Trump with a Dem majority is just one of the fantasies…much less the refusal of Pence to confirm the electoral votes being accepted as sufficient reason to throw the election into the House. I was considerably less worried about a successful coup on 6 Jan than I was an even greater bloodbath. Trump, of course, is pretty lucky to be walking around at this point, but happily from his POV most of the lone assassins are his admirers.
Todd, the scary part of the scheme to get Pence to confound the count on January 6 is…it could have worked if Pence cooperated!
Yes, but that doesn’t mean it would be accepted.
But, yes, the neoliberal “leader”ship of the Democratic Party keeps keeping on as the Clueless Party, doing almost everything they do clumsily and insufficiently.
At least most of the political news out of Europe this morning was rather cheering, unless we consider how Long It Took for Switzerland and San Marino to do what they did, how Iceland Didn’t quite get a women majority in their legislature (pretty damn close is still a good thing), and the general tenor of the news from Germany…even if the fascist party still managed to get 10% of the vote and the Greens not nearly as much as the early polls might’ve suggested (but, then, polls). But support for the right and the remnants of the Communist Party were cut considerably, and the Greens got their largest national vote even as the CDU/CSU got their lowest since the current state was created. I’ll take it. And we Should have the potential of a Green/Social-Democratic/Libertarian government in our country, but we can’t even shake the filibuster, yet.
Todd, the divisions in the Democratic Party may eventually doom it.
The fantasies of “unity” and its necessity, without actual compromise from the corporate Democrats, will kill it faster. Though it has been killing it, rather obviously, at the state levels for the same forty years, as well as not helping them when they should be mopping the floor with the GOP on the national level as well, since it hasn’t been less than reactionary on balance since the early ’80s.
When the little Christian Democratic party in the US gains my friend Laura’s vote, as it has rather than beginning to support Trump in any way (her lack of enthusiasm goes beyond Liz Cheney’s), you know the GOP is not serving even its true base, much as the DP hasn’t been serving its, with occasional exceptions. (Laura’s family lived in the DC area in her kid years as her family were among the staffers of the last GOP Sen from a now rigorously DP state. Though she was already washing her hands of the current GOP when US Rep Justin Amash left the party and affiliated with the Libertarians to no longer suffer direct partisan Trumpism…
Todd, the GOP has a group of wealthy donors who fund their craziness. Sometimes, I think the strategy of chaos is deliberate and cunning: just a way to keep people from thinking about issues that the Rich & Powerful don’t want us considering: tax reform, debt reduction, income equity, etc.
That, and crazyish stuff have crazyish advocates, such as reproductive rights issues and the likes of Operation Rescue and its successors. They can be depended to throw their votes (and money) at those who “support” their take on those issues…and vote every time they can. Much as I do. A lot of people, not necessarily foolishly, have to wonder why they should bother in too many circumstances.
Just read WaPo – the Covid numbers from some states are horrifying, in Idaho for example morgues are filled, you have to wait a long time for a funeral …
Why do so many people in the GOP not realize that this is a killer?
Should we give the GOP the Darwin Award?
Wolf, Trump politicized Covid-19 which made his followers mask-adverse and suspicious of the vaccines. The result: more infections, hospitalizations, and deaths.
Todd, you took the words right out of my mouth!
I was a bit disappointed too by the German election results but at least they are big steps forward!
Without the strong position of the AfD (I call them Alle Faschisten Deutschlands) in parts of former communist East Germany we would be more “Green”.
In my hometown Tübingen and the other famous university cities like Heidelberg, Freiburg the Greens are the strongest party and we also have many Green Mayors.
However here in Hungary (and Poland …) the (un-)democratic situation is even much worse than in the Repug USA, i won’t go into details.
But there always is hope!
Tomorrow I’ll take my wife to the opposition primaries which will help them find a candidate for prime minister.
And our 80 years old neighbour lady will accompany us – you don’t expect to find that kind of liberal, democratic, socialist people in that age group – though my wife and I are also over 75.
Never give up!
I haven’t yet, Wolf, and good for you. I’ve certainly met no few aged leftists and radical democrats (small d) over the years, and I’m becoming one, slowly.
Yes, it was distressing to note in 2016 to note that all the “nuclear powers” were in (or soon to be in) the hands of fascist or fascist-sympathetic governments, with the arguable exception of France…and the influx of fascist or might as well be fascist governments around the world was way the hell too common. (And, of course, the remnants of the German Communist Party, falling out of the Bundestag, probably are taking some votes that would otherwise go to the Greens or SPD.)
We’ll see how things go…
Wolf, we won’t give up, but the Future looks ominous!
Well, it won’t get better on its own. And I certainly need to do more than gripe.
This doorstop just came out and you finished it already? Wow, you fast readers. We both have holds on it at the library, but there are hundreds ahead of us. Republicans are far more interested in personal power and re-election than democracy with a little or big D.
Rick, I bought PERIL on the day it was published–September 21–and started reading it immediately. It’s a 483 page book so it took me a few days to finish it.