Wave of books on the Trump presidency reveal stunning episodes inside the White House

The post-presidency Donald Trump autopsy already shows signs of becoming a distinct subgenre – and in good news for future scholars, many of the myriad books on the way will benefit from the insight of the president himself.

According to one report, Mr Trump has already given more than 22 interviews for 17 books that will examine the last four years, speaking on the record much of the time and even inviting some favoured authors down to his encampment at Mar-a-Lago for extended sessions.

And among the authors he’s spoken to are reportedly some of the most uncompromising reporters of the Trump era: The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman, for one, and Michael Wolff, author of the excoriating 2018 expose Fire and Fury.

Given that the ex-president has made precious few public appearances since Joe Biden’s inauguration and largely restricted himself to fuming and crowing written statements, these interviews will be crucial to understanding his mindset during a truly bizarre phase of American history.

But while eager readers await the results, several tomes picking over the Trump years are being released right now – and between their pages are some truly shocking revelations about just what went on during the later Trump administration.

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Juneteenth: “Nobody had heard of it”

In Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost, the Wall Street Journal’s Michael C. Bender details how MrTrump grappled with the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer – and how his campaign came to botch it so spectacularly.

As protests against racism and police violence spilled onto streets across the country, campaign manager Brad Parscale was tasked with booking the re-election campaign’s first rally in months. Bender explained how Mr Trump ended up booking a rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the site of the worst modern-day massacre of Black Americans, to coincide with Juneteenth, the day that marks the final emancipation of America’s enslaved people.

In Bender’s telling, White House advisers and Republican Party officials sprang into action to try and get Trump to change the date of the rally. It apparently became clear he had never heard of the day. Only after he asked a Black Secret Service agent if he knew what Juneteenth did the president fully grasp its significance.

“Yes,” Bender quotes the agent as saying. “I know what it is. And it’s very offensive to me that you’re having this rally on Juneteenth.”

The date of the rally was moved – and Mr Trump was keen to take credit for making Juneteenth public knowledge. “Nobody had heard of it,” he told Bender in an interview. “I made Juneteenth very famous.”

The Tulsa rally was, in the end, a disaster, with Mr Trump addressing an arena not even half-full while overflow areas outside were dismantled. Footage of the president walking despondently from Marine One to the White House made his mood abundantly clear.

Coronavirus: “Hopefully Covid takes out John”

According to Yasmeen Abutaleb and Damian Paletta’s Nightmare Scenario, which chronicles the Trump administration’s bungled and chaotic response to the Covid-19 pandemic, the president reportedly joked to a roomful of people that he hoped the virus would “take out” his former national security adviser, John Bolton.

The incident came during a meeting well before vaccines were available, at a point when the pandemic was in full swing but the president was still insisting his aides not cover their faces. As Trump sat with his team, according to the authors, economic adviser Larry Kudlow stifled a cough, hushing the room into silence.

“Larry will never get Covid,” Mr Trump joked. “He will defeat it with his optimism.”

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And then: “Hopefully Covid takes out John.”

According to the authors’ sources, Mr Trump seemed entirely serious. At the time, Mr Bolton had sunk to an absolute low in the president’s esteem by publishing a memoir of his own that depicted the president as a clueless incompetent who compulsively lied and fawned over powerful adversaries.

Mr Trump, of course, went on to contract Covid-19 himself just weeks before the election. The virus infected several others at the White House and sent the president to Walter Reed Medical Centre, where doctors almost put him on a ventilator.

SNL: “There must be collusion with the Democrats”

Mr Trump’s habit of fixating on his enemies is well known, as is his history of publicly and privately suggesting that federal agencies go after them for their supposed crimes. But according to a recent report from The Daily Beast, this list of enemies extended into the world of weekend TV.

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In 2019, sources told the site, Mr Trump grew so enraged at the show’s continued lampooning of him and his administration that he asked White House aides and lawyers whether the Justice Department could be unleashed on the show, and upon other late-night comedians who mocked him so relentlessly.

Mr Trump ranted about Saturday Night Live’s impressions many a time, and once tweeted that “It’s truly incredible that shows like Saturday Night Live, not funny/no talent, can spend all of their time knocking the same person (me), over & over, without so much of a mention of ‘the other side’.

“Should Federal Election Commission and/or FCC look into this? There must be Collusion with the Democrats and, of course, Russia!”

What struck the sources who’ve shared their story was that in private, the president repeatedly demanded to know whether hosts such as Jimmy Kimmel could be investigated or sanctioned for satirising him.

Since the Beast reported the story, Mr Trump has denied calling for official inquiries into the show, though in a statement he also ranted that “the 100% one-sided shows should be considered an illegal campaign contribution for the Democrat Party”.