Pelosi feared Trump would launch nuclear weapons in final days, book claims
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was fearful former President Trump would launch nuclear weapons in his final days in the White House, according to a new book.
Washington Post journalists Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker write in “I Alone Can Fix It” that Pelosi called Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, after the Capitol riot to express her concerns about Trump’s behavior, the newspaper reported.
According to the book, she wanted to ensure Trump could not start a war and launch nuclear weapons as one of his final acts in power.
“This guy’s crazy,” Pelosi reportedly told Milley. “He’s dangerous. He’s a maniac.”
“Ma’am, I guarantee you that we have checks and balances in the system,” Milley responded, Leonnig and Rucker write.
Trump responded to the excerpts from the book by saying that Pelosi is a “nut job.”
“Nancy Pelosi is a known nut job. Her enraged quotes that she was afraid that I would use nuclear weapons is just more of the same. In fact, I was the one who got us out of wars, not into wars,” Trump said.
They also state that Milley and other military officials feared Trump would attempt a coup to stay in power and considered resigning.
“They may try, but they’re not going to f—— succeed,” Milley reportedly told his deputies when discussing the potential of a coup. “You can’t do this without the military. You can’t do this without the CIA and the FBI. We’re the guys with the guns.”
Milley thought Trump was “the classic authoritarian leader with nothing to lose,” the authors write.
Trump in a statement on Thursday dismissed the allegations in the new book, saying he “never threatened, or spoke about, to anyone, a coup of our Government.”
“So ridiculous!” he said while repeating unfounded allegations of massive election fraud and saying he lost respect for Milley last summer.
The authors interviewed more than 140 people for the book, due out on Tuesday, including Trump himself for more than two hours.
–Updated at 12:07 p.m.
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