New book details how Republican leaders learned to stop worrying and love Trump
This book and article are… remarkable. Look at this excerpt:
At his core, Alberta depicts Trump as a transactional, cynical and cunning person, who understands what his supporters want by consuming large amounts of media and watching how Republicans failed in the past. In Alberta’s telling, Trump offers perks to gain support, threatens foes with the wrath of his supporters and makes cold, narcissistic calculations to keep power.
“Those f—ing evangelicals,” Trump says in a meeting with GOP lawmakers, according to the book, smiling and shaking his head. In Trump’s mind, Alberta writes, he would “give them the policies and the access to authority that they longed for. In return they would stand behind him unwaveringly.”
Standing before the group of religious leaders in 2018, Trump said of Christianity, “ ‘I owe so much to it in so many ways.’ He then proceeded to explain that he wouldn’t be standing before them without it — not because of how the faith shaped his life or informed his worldview, but ‘because the Evangelical vote was mostly gotten by me.’ The attendees walked out of the room in a daze.”
He reports that Trump pressured the head of the Iowa GOP in 2016 to invalidate the results after he lost the caucus.
In November 2016, Henry McMaster, then South Carolina’s lieutenant governor, told Trump he wanted to be governor of the state — after being the first statewide official to endorse Trump for president. “That’s it?” Trump replied. “Well that should be easy. You’re already the lieutenant governor!”
McMaster explained that it was not so easy — and that he could only become governor if Nikki Haley were not around. “Within days, seemingly out of left field, Trump announced Haley as his pick for ambassador to the United Nations.”
‘Mother Is Not Going to Like This’: The 48 Hours That Almost Brought Down Trump - POLITICO Magazine