Apparently, former President Donald Trump really dove off the deep end with his demands for governors to use violence to stop civil rights protests. Trump’s reaction was so severe in fact, that Maine Governor Janet Mills [1] thought he was “having a nervous breakdown,” according to a new book by New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alex Burns.
The Independent [2] obtained a copy of their book This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America’s Future, which is to be released on May 3rd.
Trump is, of course, notorious for his rants but this incident apparently kicked the situation up several notches. So much so in fact, that Mills was worried enough to summon a member of her security detail to join her in listening to Trump.
Mills, a Democrat, recalled her conversation with the guard in an interview with Martin and Burns.
“You gotta sit here and listen to this because I think the president of the United States is having a nervous breakdown or something, and it’s scary,” she said.
And Mills wasn’t alone in her worry about the then-president’s state of mind.
On the other side of the country, Oregon Governor Kate Brown, [3] also a Democrat, found herself really alarmed over Trump’s demands that governors crackdown on protesters, so she called her husband to have him listen along.
“You can’t make th*s shit up,” she allegedly said.
Protests for racial justice and civil rights sprung up all across the country in response to the m*rder of George Floyd at the hands of officer Derek Chauvin and this proved to be a thorn in Trump’s side as he ran against Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election. At the time the then-president frequently portrayed the riots as out of control “based on the actions of a minority of protesters in a handful of cities with Democratic mayors,” per the Independent.
Ironically, some within Trump’s circle believed the violence that ensued in some of the protests would benefit the then-president’s reelection campaign. Brown sought out then-Vice President Mike Pence for help in removing federal agents, who were violently clashing with protesters on a nightly basis on Trump’s orders, one administration official from her state warned her: “Not everyone wants to de-escalate this.”
So I guess this means Trump and others in the GOP didn’t mind fomenting violence as long as it helped him be reelected.
Fortunately, that didn’t work.