There are three recently published books that provide insider information about the process of the 2020 election, and expose how Donald Trump attempted to subvert the results of democratic elections.
The first is Landslide: The Final Days of the Trump White House by Michael Wolff. The book shows the narcissism, delusion, madness, and incompetency of Trump through interviews with many of Trump's staff and subordinates. Wolff concluded that Trump lived completely in a world of his own imagination and had almost nothing to do with reality.
The second book is Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost by Michael Bender, a journalist from The Wall Street Journal, which details the 2020 election campaigns.
The third book, I Alone Can Fix It, is co-authored by two well-known Washington Post journalists Leonnig Carol Leonnig and Luke Philip Rucker, both were winners of the Pulitzer Prize. The book reveals more shocking insider exposés to the public.
From left: Mark Esper, Donald Trump, Mark Milley. Source: USA Today
While some might question the veracity of these three books, we believe that their contents are largely credible. On the whole, the details disclosed in these three books are consistent with the well-known records of Trump's personality and deeds. Moreover, none of the parties mentioned in the book, such as the U.S. Army General Mark Milley, have come out to refute the details.
Trump of course, denies the above disclosure. Yet, his response is more of ad hominem attacks. Reuters reported that in a statement, Trump said that, "if I was going to do a coup, one of the last people I would want to do it with is General Mark Milley".
Yet, there are still military personnel like Milley, as well as many state election officials, in addition to numerous state and federal court personnel who upheld the principle of the constitution and rejected Trump and his cohort's electoral fraud lies. The United States was therefore able to overcome the most serious constitutional crisis after the civil war. For instance, on January 2, 2021, Trump pressed Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to find him 11,780 votes, but this was rejected. Yet, if Milley and the secretaries of state in several key states who were in charge of the state's electoral operations failed to uphold constitutional principles because of the pressures from Trump, then Trump's coup would indeed succeed.
Trump's election, his tenure, and the way he stepped down should cause a debate about the soundness of the American political system. Are the voting rights of every citizen equally protected? How should the spread of fake news in public information be dealt with? How did some billionaires involve in electoral corruptions? Are there serious drawbacks in the electoral college system? Has the distribution of representatives to Congress violated the constitution? The more important lesson is that we now see in a democratic and free society, a dangerous madman, especially one who was an opportunist good at misleading public opinion, could easily create divisions, spread hatred, incite riots, and attempted to subvert the constitutional government. This is serious and far-reaching consequence of Trump's last move.
There is therefore an urgency to strengthen the democratic constitutional government, as well as the protection of each voter's voting rights in the United States, and to enhance the election procedures. Those who instigate hatred and spread lies, and abuse their power should be held accountability. Else, incidents like the Capitol Riot would happen again, and the future of the U.S. democratic constitutionalism would be full of uncertainties. If Trump and the forces he represents succeed in his attempt to subvert democratic constitutionalism, then the fate of the U.S. will be worrying. The American Civil Wars and the destruction of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich shall serve as a reminder that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
