A Warning

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The Donald J. Trump administration will be remembered as among the most tumultuous in American history. Future historians will record the volatility of the president’s decision-making, as well as the internal struggles of a government forced to grapple with it. They will write that his advisors came to find him unfit for the job. He couldn’t focus on governing, and he was prone to abuses of power, from ill-conceived schemes to punish his political rivals to a propensity for undermining vital American institutions. They will document how officials considered drastic—some might say desperate—measures to warn the American people. During the Watergate scandal, key government leaders quit in protest of President Richard Nixon’s inappropriate activities. The press dubbed it the “Saturday Night Massacre.” What is not known is that the same measure was considered less than halfway into the Trump administration, as top advisors and cabinet-level officials contemplated what might be called a midnight self-massacre, resigning en masse to call attention to Trump’s misconduct and erratic leadership. The idea was abandoned out of fear that it would make a bad situation worse. It got worse anyway. Full awareness of the deteriorating state of affairs dawned on me late one evening, when the loss of a good man revealed the true nature of a troubled one. It was the evening that ultimately led to the writing of this book.

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