“Frankly, We Did Win This Election”: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost

by Michael C. Bender

  “Well, what are we going to do?” Trump asked a room full of military and national security advisers.

  Milley stood up, walked around to Trump’s side of the Resolute Desk, and unfurled a map of the Middle East’s troubled region in front of them both. Milley frantically drew on the map where he thought U.S. forces should be positioned. As he explained his reasoning, Trump listened, decided that would be the plan, and abruptly ended the meeting.

  “Okay,” Trump said. “That’s what we’re going to do.”

  After the meeting, Trump’s national security adviser, Robert O’Brien, immediately confronted Milley as Esper and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo stood nearby.

  “Never do that again,” O’Brien said. “Don’t brief the president from behind the Resolute Desk without going through us.”

  Milley flashed the palm of his hand at O’Brien.

  “Who the fuck do you think you are?” Milley said. “It is my legal responsibility to advise the president of the United States on military matters. So, if I have to throw a fucking map in front of the president, that’s what I’m going to do.”

  On the morning of June 1, the final compromise inside the Oval Office was to rely on the National Guard to keep the peace in Washington—a win for Barr, Milley, and Esper. But Trump could also claim victory by calling up the 82nd Airborne Division and stationing them at Joint Base Andrews in suburban Maryland. The elite unit had last been deployed in January—amid the escalating tensions with Iran over the killing of General Soleimani. Another two hundred military police were deployed from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to Fort Belvoir, Virginia, about twenty miles southwest of the White House—just in case.

  Trump’s aggressiveness in the Oval Office spilled into his 11:00 a.m. teleconference with fifty state governors. Seated in the Situation Room with Barr, Milley, and Esper, Trump exaggerated claims about the violence and alarmed officials both on the call and in the room by announcing he’d just put Milley “in charge.” He said police should respond to protesters throwing rocks the same as if they were firing guns. He urged the governors to use the National Guard to knock out protesters “like bowling pins.”

  He sounded at times like he was narrating the call instead of leading it.

  “It’s like we’re talking about a war,” Trump said.

  Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, said he’d already called up the National Guard and asked Trump to explain to the American people that the guardsmen were there to help keep the peace and not as an occupying force sent to take over cities. But Trump liked the more hostile imagery.

  “People wouldn’t have minded an occupying force,” Trump told Walz. “I wish we had an occupying force.”

  Trump also reprised some of Barr’s points from his earlier meeting, but his shorthand came off as callous and insensitive.

  “You have to dominate—if you don’t dominate, you’re wasting your time,” he said. “You have to dominate, and you have to arrest people, and you have to try people, and they have to go to jail for long periods.”

  When Barr had talked in the Oval Office about dominating the streets, he meant increasing the number of law enforcement officers. But Trump simply ordered the governors to “dominate,” repeating the word six times in the first ten minutes of the call in a way that sounded more physical and aggressive than anything Barr had suggested.

  Barr, who was in the Situation Room with Trump, added some context. He urged the states to create a “strong presence” with law enforcement. The National Guard, he said, could help control the crowd and free up local law enforcement to go after the troublemakers.

  “There are very few people who are running around lighting fires,” Barr said. “They have to be taken off the streets and arrested and processed.”

  Barr suggested a federal-state partnership modeled on the Joint Terrorism Task Force, which had been in place for decades to coordinate state and federal investigative efforts.

  But a few minutes later, Trump seized on Barr’s suggestion and referred to the protesters as “terrorists.”

  “These are terrorists,” Trump said. “They’re looking to do bad things to our country. They’re Antifa and the radical left.”

  After the call had gone on for nearly an hour, Illinois governor J. B. Pritzker, a Democrat, pointed out that no mention had been made of George Floyd or any civil justice issues at the center of the protests.

  “I’ve been extraordinarily concerned about the rhetoric that’s been used by you,” Pritzker told Trump. “It’s been inflammatory, and it’s not okay for that officer to choke George Floyd to death. But we have to call for calm.”

  Trump immediately snapped back. He criticized Pritzker’s handling of the coronavirus, an issue that they hadn’t discussed at all on the call, and touted the “great compassion” he’d shown after Floyd had been killed. Then Trump lost the thread and referred to the Minnesota man as “Officer Floyd” and spoke passionately about the launch of the SpaceX rocket he’d watched a few days earlier.

  Trump responded the way he often did to stress, which was to control the minutiae of someone else’s job. The president, who would often act as his own White House communications director and chief of staff, suddenly worked like the conference call operator.

  “Okay, who’s next, please? Hashtag two,” Trump said, using Twitter jargon to describe the phone keypad buttons—the pound key, and then the number two—that the governors needed to press to speak.

  “Hashtag two, please,” he repeated.

  “We have no one in queue at this time,” the operator said.

  After the call, Milley confronted Trump about his role. He was an adviser, and not in command.

  Trump had had enough.

  “I said you’re in fucking charge!” Trump shouted at him.

  “Well, I’m not in charge!” Milley yelled back.

  “You can’t fucking talk to me like that!” Trump said.

  The argument continued to escalate between the native New Yorker and his Boston-born military adviser. Few New York-Boston disputes had ever held in the balance such profound consequences.

  “Goddamnit,” Milley said to others in the Situation Room. “There’s a room full of lawyers here. Will someone inform him of my legal responsibilities?”

  “He’s right, Mr. President,” Barr said again. “The general is right.”

  Barr, Milley, and Esper left the White House after the teleconference, and Trump returned to the Oval Office. When an internal White House email circulated that afternoon ordering staff to evacuate the building by 4:00 p.m. due to the protests, Trump had already been plotting his exit.

  He huddled that afternoon with Jared, Ivanka, and Hope and continued to vent about the media coverage of the protests and his handling of the unrest. Trump wanted to counter that footage of the darkened White House and show he wasn’t cowering in fear. With Park Police planning to push the perimeter farther back, the White House had notified the Secret Service that the president was interested in walking through Lafayette Square to inspect damage at the park and to speak to law enforcement in the area. But inside the Oval Office, Trump discussed two other destinations to demonstrate he was out of the bunker and in control. Both were politically compelling backdrops, but each offered a distinctive subtext.

  One option was the Lincoln Memorial, a short motorcade less than two miles from the White House. Demonstrators had gathered for the past few nights at the ninety-eight-year-old neoclassical temple honoring the Great Emancipator. A group of Howard University students had held a prayer vigil at the memorial. It might project a sense of unity for Trump to stand next to the symbol of American excellence etched into white Georgian marble.

  The other choice was St. John’s Church, just a short walk from the White House. The chapel where Lincoln had prayed was a powerful symbol of faith in the heart of Washington, and a visit from Trump would be an unmistakable communiqué to the evangelical base the president had wooed for years. Two weeks earlier, Trump had t
old his team he wanted to be the face of the effort to reopen churches shuttered by the pandemic. He had watched a Fox News report about disputes between church leaders and Democratic governors. He’d then held an impromptu news conference to declare that churches, mosques, and synagogues were “essential services” that needed to remain open and threatened to override governors who refused. When asked what authority the president had to issue such a warning, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany had dismissed the question as a “hypothetical.”

  Trump loved the idea of walking to the church. He spoke to Kellyanne about the plan, and she asked whether he was bringing a coalition of evangelical and Black supporters with him. She reminded the president that Jared had said he’d reach out to Black leaders after Floyd had been killed.

  “I thought those calls were being made already,” Kellyanne said.

  That evening, Barr, Milley, and Esper returned to the White House. They had little idea what they were walking into—but they also never should have been there in the first place.

  Barr and Milley had spent the afternoon at the Washington Field Office, an FBI bureau about two miles from the White House, where the administration set up a de facto command post for law enforcement agencies maintaining order in the nation’s capital. They could see on the television sets that Park Police still hadn’t widened the perimeter around the White House. Some communications equipment in their operations center needed to be rebooted. A sense of restlessness seemed to sweep through the room.

  Milley suggested heading back to the White House where they could see what was going on in the park and joked about swinging by to see if Trump wanted to have dinner—and Barr, somewhat astonishingly, agreed.

  Milley had planned to eventually head in that direction. He was dressed in combat fatigues with the intention of visiting with law enforcement and guardsmen on duty that night, including those on patrol near the White House. But even in jest, the suggestion of casually dropping in on the president was distressing—and memorable—for others in the room.

  Barr later told others that he had planned to debrief the president at some point that evening. But he hadn’t visited the Oval Office without an appointment in months.

  Esper, meanwhile, had been at the Pentagon, where he called the governors of Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia to start moving National Guard units toward Washington. Esper was on his way to the command post at the Washington Field Office when Milley called and said they were headed to the White House. Esper rerouted directions to his driver, and he was surprised to find a large group of White House officials in the room just outside the Oval Office when he arrived at nearly 6:30 p.m.

  “Where’s the meeting with the president?” Esper asked.

  There’s no meeting, he was told.

  Trump was about to speak to the media, and then they would all walk to the church.

  Reporters had been summoned to the Rose Garden at about 6:00 p.m., roughly the same time the convoys for Barr and Milley had pulled into the White House drive. As reporters lined up outside for the remarks, Barr and Milley walked directly to Lafayette Square to greet the law enforcement officers lined up along the security perimeter on H Street. Milley crossed paths with Major Adam DeMarco, a D.C. National Guard officer who was among the most senior military soldiers on the scene.

  “How many protesters?” Milley asked.

  “More than two thousand,” DeMarco said.

  “Keep the troops calm,” Milley told him. The guardsmen were there to respect the demonstrators’ First Amendment rights, he added.

  Barr, meanwhile, walked down the line of Park Police and D.C. guardsmen and then toward the statue of President Jackson. He was surprised to see that Park Police still hadn’t expanded the security perimeter. But DeMarco, who had been briefed by Park Police when he’d arrived on the scene about ninety minutes earlier, had understood that they wouldn’t clear demonstrators from the park until 7:00 p.m., when a curfew imposed by Washington’s mayor, Muriel Bowser, went into effect.

  At about 6:15 p.m., a round of cheers erupted from the protesters on H Street, on the north side of Lafayette Square. Protesters had watched law enforcement take a knee and assumed it was a show of solidarity. That was incorrect. The officers were simply putting on their gas masks.

  At the same time, cable TV cameras showed Milley standing in the park on his phone. In combat fatigues and surrounded by officers outfitted from head to toe in riot gear, the scene looked like an Army general commanding his troops. Milley later told colleagues that he’d taken a call from his wife, who had seen him on TV. She called to ask what in the world he was doing.

  Trump’s team was watching, too. The group of White House officials whom Esper would find a few minutes later outside the Oval—Pence, Meadows, O’Brien, Jared, Hope, McEnany, Farah, and others—had crowded into the small office where two of the president’s assistants sat, glued to screens as on-air reporters tried to make sense of Barr and Milley in the park and the timing of Trump’s unscheduled speech, which was already several minutes late.

  But one had little to do with the other. Inside the West Wing, Trump had only decided to walk over to St. John’s moments before reporters had been called to the Rose Garden. At about the same time, Meadows told Tony Ornato, a deputy White House chief of staff for operations, to notify the Secret Service that Trump would walk to the church after his Rose Garden speech.

  When Alyssa Farah heard Meadows tell Ornato that the area needed to be secured for Trump, she reminded the chief of staff that news reporters were mixed in with the protesters. The daughter of two journalists—including Joseph Farah, the editor in chief of WorldNetDaily, a right-wing website known for promoting conspiracy theories—Farah cautioned that their plan would backfire if clearly marked reporters were roughed up by law enforcement. She asked to send word to the front line to watch for press credentials.

  “Yeah, that’s not going to happen,” Meadows said with a laugh. Meadows later disputed the exchange.

  Milley and Barr were walking back to the White House as black-clad officers from the Secret Service civil disturbance unit positioned on the park’s northeastern corner were the first to push to expand the security perimeter at about 6:20 p.m. They started pushing protesters away but quickly stopped, according to hours of cable news and social media video compiled and analyzed by the Washington Post. Protesters at that corner of H Street and Madison Place responded by hurling water bottles, candy bars, and eggs—not bricks and stones, as law enforcement later claimed.

  At 6:22 p.m., a voice on a loudspeaker from behind the police line asked for the protesters’ attention. Park Police said the message was a warning to clear the area, but footage showed protesters couldn’t hear the loudspeaker through the crowd noise.

  Six minutes later, the National Guard and other law enforcement officers advanced on the crowd.

  Park Police on horseback backed up Secret Service agents on the northeastern corner of the park. Members of the Bureau of Prisons special operations response team arrived wearing riot gear and armed with pepper ball guns and canister launchers. Officers again started to push the perimeter.

  At 6:35 p.m., a chemical grenade rolled down H Street. Reporters waiting for Trump in the Rose Garden heard the explosions two blocks away.

  The protesters had turned and ran. A Park Police officer swung his riot shield into the stomach of an Australian TV cameraman, Tim Myers, who was in the middle of a live shot for 7News, one of the country’s most watched news channels. Viewers of the Australian breakfast program, including Australian prime minister Scott Morrison, watched from a stunning first-person angle as the officer then punched his fist directly into the camera lens. Another officer struck 7News correspondent Amelia Brace with his baton.

  “Whoa!” 7News anchor David Koch said as he watched Myers get slugged. “Amelia, are you okay? Or your cameraman?”2

  Officers from the Bureau of Prisons shot pepper ball guns at the fleeing crowd, and Park Police conti
nued to roll tear gas bombs and sting ball grenades down the street. By 6:38 p.m., the police line had surged past St. John’s Church.

  At 6:43 p.m., Trump exited the Oval Office alone, walked along the colonnade, and down the steps to the lectern awaiting him in the Rose Garden. For six minutes, he spoke over the sound of exploding tear gas canisters as officers continued to push demonstrators down the final half block to I Street.

  “I am your president of law and order,” Trump said. “And an ally of all peaceful protesters.”

  He reprised many of the conversations that had taken place behind closed doors earlier that day. He accused Antifa of domestic acts of terror. He announced he’d mobilized “thousands of heavily armed soldiers” to keep the peace in Washington and threatened to deploy active duty troops to other cities. He vowed to restore order to help business owners.

  “Thank you very much,” Trump said as he closed his remarks. “And now I’m going to pay my respects to a very, very special place.”

  Inside the outer Oval, aides erupted in high-fives. The cheering confused Barr and Milley, who hadn’t been briefed on Trump’s plans that evening.

  After his Rose Garden statement, Trump turned and climbed the red-carpeted steps behind him. He resisted the temptation to answer shouted questions from reporters. Instead, he snuck a quick side-eyed glance at the media after he reached the top step and turned left under the covered pavilion toward the Oval Office door, which aides opened for him.

  In a traditional White House, the chief of staff would have been duty-bound to apprise Cabinet secretaries and the Joint Chiefs chairman of a plan that included a walk through a days-long protest to a church for a photo op. But Meadows didn’t chief the staff as much as staff the president.