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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC. Good morning everyone. If you thought there would be no bombshells left to reveal by now about the drama of the Trump Administration from the pandemic through January 6th. Then you haven't been hearing some of the revelations from the new book by Washington Post reporters Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig called I Alone Can Fix It. Many of you know where that title comes from, it was one of Trump's lines from the 2016 Republican Convention.

Trump: Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it.

Brian Lehrer: You already do know some of the ways that Trump tried to fix the pandemic and fix the election during the last year of his administration. Did you know that on January 6th during the Capitol Riots, Vice President Mike Pence refused to take a Secret Service ride to safety because he was afraid they wouldn't let him return to the Capitol to finish the job of certifying the election. Did you know Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman General Milley was afraid of Trump pulling off an actual coup to stay in office. That general Milley was thinking of parallels to Nazi Germany in the '1930s. Those are just two of the new things in this book.

Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig were on this show for their previous book about Trump with the title of another famous way he referred to himself A Very Stable Genius. Remember that book? We're glad they're joining us for this one, I Alone Can Fix It. Carol and Philip, thanks for making this one of your stops. Welcome back to WNYC.

Carol Leonnig: Thank you for having us Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Philip do we have you?

Philip Rucker: Yes it such a privilege to be with you. We had such a great conversation the last time and we're looking to dig in. Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Let me just start with those anecdotes because there's so mind blowing and then we'll zoom out to a bigger picture. Carol what happened with Mike Pence and the Secret Service on January 6th?

Carol Leonnig: Brian, I'm so glad you think this is a bombshell because Phil and I did too when we first heard it and began digging deeper. What many people didn't realize is while president Trump was gleefully watching his followers and supporters matching on the Capitol and breaching the outer barricades pushing past police to get closer to the Capitol to "stop the steal." Inside Mike Pence was being evacuated on an emergency basis from the Senate floor where he was taking his role very seriously to certify the election that Biden was the future president. As he was evacuated rioters were literally charging up the steps to the landing and were there seconds in the hallway right after Pence had crossed it to a hideaway with his secret service detail.

In the hideaway his detail leader insisted to him three times. "We have to leave. We have to get you out of here." Pence resisted twice and on the third request it wasn't a request, it was an order. When he got to the basement where the subterranean safe parking place, where his detail had taken him. Pence was asked by his detail leader Tim Gables. I need you to get in the car that's safer. Pence responded, "I trust you Tim but I'm not getting in that car. Some other agent may drive me away from here and I'm staying in this building." That's how adamant he was about certifying the election and his feeling of duty that he was going to finish the job and not be chased off by essentially a group of criminals.

Brian Lehrer: Philip, do you use the word kidnap in the book? Because it sounds like Pence was afraid he wasn't being rescued, but being kidnapped by Trump in the scenario that Carol just laid out so he couldn't return that night to certify the election.

Philip Rucker: Brian, we don't use that word, but what Carol just described and the way you synthesized it is exactly right. Pence was afraid that the Secret Service would take him away from the Capitol perhaps only for his own safety, not necessarily a conspiracy at play. Nevertheless, he thought the outcome would be that he would be evacuated from the Capitol grounds and therefore unable to fulfill his constitutional duty and oversee the certification of the election results. He was adamant with his Chief of Staff Mark Shaw and others in his entourage that they remaining underneath the Capitol and not leave until the job is done.

Brian Lehrer: I'm curious Carol, did Pence know that people in that January 6th crowd at around that time I guess were chanting, "Hang my Mike Pence."

Carol Leonnig: Our reporting indicates that while he was gathered with really so many members of his family in that hideaway, his brother, his wife, his daughter. While he was there with his detail and family outside the windows they were all looking out at that hangman's noose that was outside. Those windows showed the entirety of the hordes that were descending on the doorways on the east and west side of the Capitol.

Brian Lehrer: Philip, is there a deeper story to tell about the Trump and Pence relationship in the context of this individual anecdote? Pence always seemed like the perfect sycophant for four years leading up to that point. Whenever you'd see him on TV he was always thanking and praising president Trump in practically every statement. Was it more complicated behind the scenes?

Philip Rucker: Brian, it actually wasn't that much more complicated behind the scenes. Pence was a loyal sycophant as you have just described, beginning when he was selected as Vice President in 2016 all the way through January of 2021. That is when the relationship had a rupture, because Trump demanded that Pence as Vice President do something that any constitutional scholar would tell you was not possible, was not legal, was not allowed under the terms of our constitution.

He wanted Pence to oversee rejecting the electoral college results sending them back to the states. That was something Pence actually was open to doing, and studied it with his lawyers, with constitutional experts, and quickly determined there was no possible way for him to do this. Trump would not take no for an answer and it just created this rupture to the point that two months after Trump left office, Carol and I traveled down to Mar-a-Lago to interview President Trump for the book.

Trump said he thought Mike Pence lacked courage. He thought Mike Pence did the wrong thing that day. He was very upset with the Vice President. Saw this as an act of disloyalty, as a betrayal even for having certified the results on January 6th.

Brian Lehrer: Did Pence sit for an interview. I'm surprised that Trump did since he knows your reputation for journalistic integrity and independent reporting on his administration throughout. I'm surprised that Trump sat for an interview with you, I guess you could talk about why. Pence, did you ask, Carol?

Carol Leonnig: We did ask to interview Vice President Pence and he was not interested in doing that. We did speak to I would just tell you a multitude of people who knew what Pence was going through and knew what he was saying in real time and drew us a really quite excruciating portrait of his experience on January 6th and in the harrowing days after until the inauguration. I would stress to you that part of the reason Donald Trump spoke to us, is that he said it himself he enjoys talking about himself and his presidency. He wants to as he told Phil and me get the word out about how he was wronged, how the election in his view was rigged.

Ultimately he craves an audience, he's lacking one now, can't go out to the south lawn and talk to reporters every morning. Can't make news by just walking out of his limousine and mentioning something to the crowds outside. He is determined to get his alternate reality, his version of events out to the public and to his supporters.

Brian Lehrer: Did you learn anything Phil, from the actual interview with Trump assuming he was all spin? Was there anything actually that came out of that interview that was new for you after covering him so closely the four years plus?

Philip Rucker: Brian, we learned a lot actually from talking to Trump for those two and a half hours. The first thing I would point out is, and your listeners all know this, Trump is somebody who doesn't have a lot of regrets. He never apologizes for anything. If you ask him if he regretted things in his presidency he usually says nothing. We asked him what does he regret about that last year? He thought he handled the coronavirus perfectly in his view but his one lingering regret was that he didn't seek US active duty troops into America cities to take on Black Lives Matter protesters in the wake of George Floyd's death.

He said he wished he had not listened to his military advisers, and instead as commander in chief deployed the military in Portland, in Seattle, in Washington, in Minneapolis, and other cities where the protests were active and loud and big, and wish he had US military force against those demonstrators. Carol and I found that to be a pretty chilling remark. It's a reminder frankly, of the role that people like General Milley, Defense Secretary Mark Esper, Attorney General Bill Barr played in the summer of 2020 to try to restrain the president from sending military into the streets.

Brain Lehrer: Yes, and that's a good segue into the General Milley, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman conversation based on the book that we're about to have. Listeners, if you're just joining us, we're talking to Washington Post reporters, Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker, whose new book about the last year of the Trump administration, mostly pandemic and election and through January 6th, their book called I Alone Can Fix It . We can take your phone calls for Carol and Philip at 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280 or tweet a question @BrianLehrer.

Phil, let me follow up on something you just said before we get to General Milley's roles, specifically. If Trump's regret was that he didn't deploy the military, during the racial justice protests after the murder of George Floyd. What other observers say about that scenario is that Trump was very tempted to deploy the military then or at other times, to create chaos, to create violent backlash, that would then give him an excuse for declaring martial law or something like it. Really suspending our democracy, maybe trying to delay the election, or otherwise doing something that's been unthinkable in US history. Do you have evidence to back that up?

Philip Rucker: Brian, it's certainly a plausible theory, if you play things out in your head. Carol and I do not have concrete reporting to suggest that that was an active strategy that President Trump had. In fact, our reporting about Trump over the years and especially in 2020, has been that he's a little less strategic than that. He's not exactly playing chess, he's playing checkers. He's just trying to get from one crisis to the next and from one news cycle to the next.

Certainly, that was a possibility and it's something that people in and around the President's orbit we're thinking about and we're cognizant of. It's one of the reasons I think, why some of those guardrails as we put it, the Defense Secretary, the Joint Chiefs, why they were so adamant about trying to separate the military from political purposes and not create a situation, a slippery slope where Trump would be using the military, for his political gains.

Keep in mind, one of the reasons why the President wanted military in the streets to take on the Black Lives Matter protesters, was because he thought it would give himself an image of strength, of authority, of control over a situation. He thought that that could accrue to his political benefit heading into the November election. For him, it was all about optics and how he would present to the public.

Brain Lehrer: All right. Let me take an early break because when we come back, I want to have a lot of time to really dig into the General Milley portion of the book. Because these scenarios are also so astounding and mind-blowing to think that the Joint Chiefs of Staff was having his people, in fact, war game. A possible defense against a coup that could have been led by the President of the United States and that the Joint Chiefs of Staff was taking that possibility very seriously. We'll continue with Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig authors of I Alone Can Fix It, right after this.

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Brain Lehrer: Brain Lehrer on WNYC as we continue with Washington Post's reporters Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig, co-authors of the new book about the last year of the Trump administration called I Alone Can Fix It. Carol, General Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, you report that toward the end of 2020, the Joint Chiefs under his direction were holding meetings to plan what you described as a reverse Saturday night massacre, if necessary to save our democracy. What does reverse Saturday night massacre mean?

Carol Leonnig: Brian, when Phil and I sat down with sources and began to hear about this war gaming it was spine-tingling. We hadn't known this in real-time when we were reporting for the Washington Post and for the public. It took time for people to be brave enough to tell us how worried they were, how panicky they were. Essentially, starting around December when President Trump was refusing the obvious moments to concede. The Electoral College certification that Joe Biden was the President-Elect.

When the President began doing that, military leaders, including every member of the Joint Chiefs, Army, Navy, Air Force, meeting with the chairman began discussing their concern. That the President would try to essentially use the guys with guns, the military, to create chaos or fear that would help him maintain his grip on power and stay in the Oval. Or that there would be something else he would do to distract voters and again, keep himself in office. Distract them with a war, for example, with Iran, a wag the dog scenario. Their idea, at least at the first was, perhaps each of them, could individually, almost like dominoes resign.

There is a funny part of a law in which every single time you try to use the military and deploy them for a military purpose, that order has to go through the chairman. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has that ability to give his military advice to the President. Each one of them talked about how they could resign, not en masse, but slowly so as to slow roll and block the president if he tried to use the military in an illegal or very dangerous way.

Brain Lehrer: Did Trump try anything like that, using the military, Carol?

Carol Leonnig: Our understanding from our reporting is that he said a lot of things that caused the hairs on the back of the generals necks to go up. These are men who have taken soldiers into combat and they were getting worried. Whether the President was actually going to do anything, we don't know that. That's one of the issues with Donald Trump writ large, though, through his presidency, right, Brian? He says a lot of things, and people aren't sure which ones he's going to act on.

He talked a lot about whether or not he should launch on Iran, as other reporters in the Post have discussed. In in fact, a very good piece by Susan Glasser in the New Yorker, this past week, gives more details about that. I Alone Can Fix It what we take away is just the constant barrage of nutty ideas the President was discussing that made them nervous. As well, the Chairman General Milley was getting middle-of-the-night phone calls from advisors who warned him about specific fringe nationalists who were being installed in key positions in the Defense Department. These advisors and friends were warning Milley to watch his back, to look out for these people and to keep tabs which is what he did.

Brain Lehrer: Todd in Kent, Connecticut. You're on WNYC. Hi, Todd.

Todd: Hi, there. Yes, I have a question. I'm concerned about the Pence story. I'm a little concerned in the first chapter of the heroism of Michael Pence and I don't think there's anything in his public record to expect that. I have two questions. One, how do you know that Pence stayed in the Capitol in order to certify the results? My second question is, something would seem more plausible to me, I'm wondering if you think it's possible. That in fact, the reason why Pence would not have gotten into the Secret Service car is not because he would necessarily want to stay to necessarily certify the results, but that if he doesn't get in the car, then he has more options of his own. He has more agency to put his finger to the wind and see how best he can come out of this.

Carol Leonnig: I'd like to take a stab at that, Brian, if I may. Phil and I are pretty skeptical and hardened reporters and excruciating and rigorous in what we do. We were on guard for people to try to sculpt their reputation or burnish it in some way or another, or burnish the reputation of their bosses. In this instance, again, we want to be careful about how we describe our sourcing, but I would argue to you that there is no other interpretation. Because we spoke to people who had Pence's interest at stake and people who were pretty critical of Pence. Consistently the record was that he was resisting this like crazy, that he was adamant. People who are not fans of Mike Pence were around him at this time and around him for a conference calls where he was demanding, "We are staying here and we were finishing the job."

Brian Lehrer: Philip, this may be a little outside the scope of the book, but I think this is one of the big fears that people have about the future. That this time we were, many of us were surprised to see that Mike Pence did have a bottom line, William Barr did have a bottom line, some of the others. Maybe next time when they see the willingness, this time around of the Republican electorate to buy something as fantastical as the big lie that Trump was selling, that maybe the next time it comes to something like that. Some of the public officials who might be the appointee of Trump 2024 next term, or whatever president might not stand up to it.

Philip Rucker: That's Brian, a very real concern and a genuine one. Look, this is not history, it's current events because Trump is the leader of the Republican party today. He says he wants to run for president in 2024. We'll see if he actually does, but if he does, he very well could win the Republican nomination and therefore he very well could win the presidency and be back. If he were to come back into office, there's no telling who his appointees might be.

He may not have a Bill Barr who, despite doing a lot of blocking and tackling tackling politically for President Trump, still had constitutional compass if it were. There was a limit to what he was willing to do when it came to the election fraud, conspiracies and claims. Who knows who the vice president could be. We asked Trump if he was going to run again with Pence and he said, "We'll see." That tells us probably not, he probably will have a different vice president who may well have a different view. Keep in mind Pence is a lawyer and through his year in public life has been a rule follower. He's not one to bust the norms and bust traditions.

He certainly was willing to fall all over himself as a sycophant to Donald Trump. At the end of the day he follows the rules and that's what he did on January 6th. There's no telling if Trump's next vice president would have the same inclination.

Brian Lehrer: Jim in Crown Heights, you're on WNYC with Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig from the Washington Post. Hi Jim.

Jim: Hi, thanks. My question is, I'm wondering if your guests know or believe, or just have an opinion on whether former President Donald Trump actually believes that the election was stolen.

Carol Leonnig: That is a great question, because even the people who are the very closest to him and that we interviewed at length sometimes for seven hours at a sitting, aren't completely sure. President Trump gave a inkling that he knew it wasn't stolen in the early days after the election by saying something about how, you don't know who the next-- Maybe the next president will be Biden, essentially. He used a different term, like we don't know who the next administration will be. He gave a little hint that it maybe wasn't the real deal.

As time went on, what Phil and I learned for the book, he insisted on only listening to those people who told him what he wanted to hear. Which is that thousands of dead people voted in Michigan and Pennsylvania, or as he told us Indians were paid to vote, whatever that means. That they had tons of evidence that people voted on absentee ballots for which there was no record of those ballots being sent to them. All of these were debunked.

In fact, Bill Barr told the president privately, all of this is bullshit, it's nonsense. The president wasn't listening to Bill Barr in December. He wasn't listening to him in late November. He was listening to Rudy Giuliani and Mike Lindell and other conspiracy theorists who were basically becoming closer to the president by telling him he was going to still be President.

Brian Lehrer: Mark, in Hanover, New Hampshire, you're on WNYC with Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig from the Washington Post, authors of I Alone Can Fix It. Hi, Mark.

Mark: Hi. I like many people I think have been very disappointed by the world's response to Donald Trump. Like you mentioned, he's playing checkers when other people, the deep state presumably could play chess. Why do you think people were not able to persuade him to do the better response say with COVID. I'm imagining, like Fauci showing him a lot of maths that have powerful messages and saying, "Sir, this is the strongest protection that we can give against this. Maybe it's a weapon from China. We have to protect the homeland."

Do you think that would have worked? I'm a middle school teacher, I think he reads kind of like a middle school child. Like you said, he doesn't understand. You know he likes to talk to the best people, Harvard, Pence, whatever, why don't they speak his language more. Would that have been persuasive to him?

Brian Lehrer: Philip?

Philip Rucker: That's a really good point, and by the way, I love Hanover, New Hampshire. I've been there many times on the campaign trail, so thanks for calling in. That's a smart point. From the beginning of the pandemic, our colleagues and I, we were always wondering in our newsroom, why isn't Trump just doing the easiest thing, which is to get control of this virus, to say what the scientists are telling him to say. Ot would have been so easy for him to do that as the president and he would have benefited politically from it at the end.

Yet Trump has this kind of self-destructive nature sometimes, where he doesn't think strategically and rationally over the long-term. Instead, he's trying to think about how to win a news cycle. For him winning the news cycle was not listening to the scientific experts. It was trying to convince the public that the virus was not a threat, or convince the public that the virus was going to disappear and go away. Convince the public that as soon as the weather gets warmer in the spring and summertime they're not going to have as higher risk of contagion and so on and so forth. It continued throughout the year, the spread of misinformation about the pandemic and about this virus.

It became so politically damaging for Trump because he was seen by so many Americans as not a credible leader in this moment of crisis. Not only not credible, but in fact, his decisions contributed to deaths across the country and that was something he could not get out from under. I think one of the main reasons why he ended up losing his bid for reelection.

Brian Lehrer: I do see that you cite in the book, the Israeli prime minister at the time, Benjamin Netanyahu, saying in 2020, that the only thing that could defeat Trump was Coronavirus. I'm sure it wasn't the only thing. Carol, did you ask Trump by any chance in your sit down with him for this book, whether he had any regrets from a political standpoint, even about the way he approached the virus. That if he had done a, "We're all in this together, let's all mask up, let's all lock down and chase this virus in six weeks time," or something like that. That kind of unity pitch, instead of just playing to an angry base like he was doing, whether that would have served him better?

Carol Leonnig: I have to say absolutely not. He expressed no regret. In fact when talking with Phil and I in the lobby at Mar-a-Lago as his faithful supporters walked by towards the dinner hour on the patio. He insisted that he had saved America with his response, that it because of him that some miracle treatments were pushed and aided many people. It was because of him that so many Americans were saved. He was pressing the FDA like they'd never been pressed he said, to both deliver some therapeutic treatments that were huge in his view. He was personally responsible again in his own worldview for the vaccine being delivered as quickly as it was. He said, 'It never would have happened if I hadn't been president."

I have to say, we have to give him his due. He did push like the diickens for that vaccine to be delivered. Now, of course, he kept pressuring as we learned, secretly behind the scenes, he was pressuring his deputies, and his health secretary, and his FDA, and his NIH and his defense folks, all the time to deliver that vaccine before the election. He didn't care whether it actually really, really was perfect or vetted properly. What he cared about is it was delivered before the election. Again to Phil's point, so he could win the news cycle, so he could win the argument that he had done something, and also, so he could he could score on election night with that positive points on the board as we say.

Brian Lehrer: To that point, Carol, I've wondered on this show, whether Joe Biden missed an opportunity considering the amount of vaccine resistance that we have in the country to embrace Trump on this point, and try to appeal to Republicans and Democrats and Independents on a more even footing. Saying, You know Donald Trump and I disagree on so many fundamental things about our country, but I want to give him credit for Operation Warp Speed, and thank him for getting us to this point. Now our job is delivery of vaccine availability." Because Trump puts so much emphasis on development of vaccines through Operation Warp Speed. Now it's Trump supporters more than anyone who seemed to be vaccine resistant. I'm just curious if you have a take on how vaccines went from being a Trump sponsored good to a Right-Wing bad.

Carol Leonnig: Unfortunately the country is suffering Trump hangover. Everything that Trump trumpeted to his followers is still lingering in our consciousness, and especially in red states that are supportive of him and with whom he really magically connected. When he said coronavirus is nothing to be worried about, people didn't immediately start to switch their view to, "Oh, you got us the vaccine, or at least you pushed for it." It's a complicated and murky world because just the other day, Donald Trump was saying he understands why people distrust the vaccine. That's not very helpful.

Brian Lehrer: No. As we start to run out of time, I just want to tell the listeners and Phil, I'll give you a last shot at this. That so much of our time in this conversation has been about things from the November Election on, but much of your book is about Trump's handling of the pandemic. You described tension between Alex Azar, Trump's health and human services secretary, and Robert Redfield head of the centers for disease control regarding a lot of things and so much else. What would you like to say going out the door about Trump and the pandemic and your portrayal in the book before we wrap it up?

Philip Rucker: Brian, what Carol and I learned in our deep reporting for I Alone Can Fix It. Is that the characteristics of Trump's leadership that were so evident from day one of his presidency his mismanagement, his chaos, his cruelty, that toolbox just work in a real crisis. When coronavirus arrived at the beginning of 2020, Trump just couldn't manage the situation, and the result was downright deadly for America, for the economy. Race relations spiraled out of control under his watch. He vowed when he ran for office that he alone could fix it, and yet he fixed nothing. He couldn't even fix the election at the end.

That's not our conclusion necessarily based on opinion, that's based on our reporting. We talked to more than 140 senior administration officials, high level people in the president's cabinet, and of course to Trump himself. That's the simple truth that emerged from that deep of deep investigative reporting.

Brian Lehrer: Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig Washington Post correspondents, now the co-authors of I Alone Can Fix It. Thank you so much for making this a stop. Thank you very much.

Philip Rucker: Thank you, Brian.

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