New Book by Mark Meadows, former Chief of Staff

[lpetrich]

Mark Meadows, former Chief of Staff, has come out with a book on the Trump Administration, "The Chief's Chief".

Meadows: Trump considered yanking Kavanaugh over ‘I like beer’ comments and apologetic tone - POLITICO

The president’s one-time chief of staff also says he’s currently “finding secretaries and undersecretaries” to staff a future Trump administration.

During Brett Kavanaugh’s controversial 2018 Supreme Court confirmation hearings, President Donald Trump “strongly considered” dropping the nominee and instead going with a “stronger candidate,” according to a new book by Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows.

It wasn’t because of accusations that Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted Christine Blasey Ford while in high school, but because he’d professed that he “liked beer” during his hearings and was, in Trump’s estimation, being too apologetic.

Meadows writes that Trump, a teetotaler who was “extremely put off” by Kavanaugh’s professed affection for suds, proposed the idea of dropping Kavanaugh during a flight on Air Force One while Meadows was still a sitting congressman. Meadows advised against it for fear the “blowback would be severe.”

At the time he was having private reservations about Kavanaugh, Trump was publicly fighting for his confirmation, mocking Blasey Ford’s testimony at a rally and brushing off concerns from GOP lawmakers about his viability as a Supreme Court nominee.

What an objection.

The new book by Meadows, “The Chief’s Chief,” contains several such insights into how the Trump presidency worked, largely while casting the 45th president in a glowing light. Meadows’ book, out on Tuesday, defends Trump’s false claims of a stolen election, offers intimate details about the state of Trump’s health, takes shots at Trump critics and echoes Trump’s paranoia about leaks to the press as he speculates by name about who exactly was talking to reporters.

At times, it reads like a hagiography. Meadows, for example, compares Trump’s speech upon returning to the White House after his Covid-related hospitalization at Walter Reed to Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.

But the book displeased Trump for saying some unflattering things about him.

The main ones concern Trump’s health as he battled Covid-19 in the fall of 2020. He reveals that Trump tested positive for Covid ahead of his first presidential debate with Joe Biden, potentially exposing dozens of individuals to infection and that Trump’s blood oxygen levels dipped to “dangerously low” levels, all while the White House painted a different picture of the president’s health.

Meadows acknowledges that while Trump tried to project a picture of strength, privately, he was battling serious symptoms of the virus while at Walter Reed.

For all MM's adoration of Trump, he criticized Trump's underlings quite a lot.

He describes his chief of staff predecessor, Mick Mulvaney, as out to lunch as the White House scrambled to respond to the pandemic at the beginning of March as cases were on the rise. Mulvaney was in Las Vegas on a golf trip, Meadows writes, and suggests that made Trump apoplectic.

...
Meadows also says Trump was “furious” when news leaked to the press that he retreated to a secure bunker beneath the White House as violent protests over the murder of George Floyd erupted in Washington. Meadows writes that Trump demanded to know who leaked the news and ordered him to find out who it could be.

...
Throughout his book, Meadows — like his boss — pays close attention to press coverage, taking note of positive and negative coverage, mentioning reporters by name, and discussing Trump’s famous media diet.

Meadows takes repeated swipes at Fox News and its Washington managing editor, Bill Sammon, who he said rebuffed his entreaties to cover Trump more favorably (Meadows portrays this as heretical).

 

[Shadowy Man]

Trump should have dropped Kavanaugh if only for how poorly the judge presented himself. Surely there were other potential justices able to act like an adult.

Just his response to Klobuchar should have got him booted.