‘Just Say We Won’: 9 Most Bonkers Revelations from Trump Election Night Tell-All, I Alone Can Fix It

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The Washington Post has published an excerpt from a new book that reveals many behind-the-scenes details from former President Donald Trump and the White House on election day. I Alone Can Fix It is the highly anticipated book from Washington Post writers Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig, who also wrote the best-selling book Very Stable Genius, which also detailed Trump’s White House inner workings and drama.

The authors of the book make clear that “Most of the people interviewed agreed to speak candidly only on the condition of anonymity.” The details presented in the book were “based on hundreds of hours of interviews with more than 140 people, including the most senior Trump administration officials, friends and outside advisers to the 45th president.”

President Joe Biden, of course, won the election in November of 2020, which appeared to take Trump and his inner circle by some level of surprise. The media didn’t project Biden as the winner of the election until the Saturday morning that followed the Tuesday vote, which led to a very early Wednesday morning White House press conference. Trump proclaimed, “frankly, we did win” the election.

What followed after that fateful week were the remarkable, norm-busting, and baseless claims of a “stolen” election. However, no evidence presented in a court of law ever convinced a judge that there was merit to the claims.  What follows are some of the best details revealed in the excerpt published by The Washington Post:

1. Trump and the White House were confident they’d “sealed the deal” and maybe even win in a landslide.

Finally, Election Day had arrived. The morning of Nov. 3, 2020, President Trump was upbeat. The mood in the West Wing was good. Some aides talked giddily of a landslide. Several women who worked in the White House arrived wearing red sweaters in a show of optimism, while some Secret Service agents on the president’s detail sported red ties for the occasion. Trump’s voice was hoarse from his mad dash of rallies, but he thought his exhausting final sprint had sealed the deal. He considered Joe Biden to be a lot of things, but a winner most definitely was not one of them. “I can’t lose to this f—— guy,” Trump told aides.

2. Fox News hosts Jeanine Pirro and Laura Ingraham were special party guests invited to the White House on election night.

Upstairs in the first family’s private quarters, Trump was glued to the television. He alternated between watching from his bedroom alone and from a family room with Melania, other family members and some of his most trusted aides, including Hope Hicks. Senior advisers including Stepien, Meadows, McEnany, Jason Miller, Stephen Miller and Ronna McDaniel were in the Map Room. Members of the president’s family — Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, Eric Trump and his wife, Lara, who worked on the campaign — came in and out much of the night, as did a pair of special party guests, Fox News stars Laura Ingraham and Jeanine Pirro.

3. Rudy Giuliani advised that Trump should proclaim victory in swing states like Michigan and Pennsylvania.

Giuliani went state by state asking Stepien, Meadows and [Jason] Miller what they were seeing and what their plan was.

“What’s happening in Michigan?” he asked.

They said it was too early to tell, votes were still being counted and they couldn’t say.

“Just say we won,” Giuliani told them.

Same thing in Pennsylvania. “Just say we won Pennsylvania,” Giuliani said.

Giuliani’s grand plan was to just say Trump won, state after state, based on nothing. Stepien, Miller and Meadows thought his argument was both incoherent and irresponsible.

“We can’t do that,” Meadows said, raising his voice. “We can’t.”

4. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper feared Trump would call out troops if the election results were not “clean and clear.”

Esper had lived through the strain of the 2000 recounts and the Bush v. Gore case. He had repeatedly told his deputies that he wanted this election to be “clean and clear,” as in free of any suggestion of corruption and indisputably clear who had won. He had feared that anything less might give Trump some shred of a reason to call out troops. Later in the evening, as returns posted in Biden’s favor, Esper told a friend, “It looks good.” The defense secretary went to bed comforted by signs that the country would get a divided and stable government — a Democratic president and, he hoped, a Republican Senate.

5. RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel and Attorney General Bill Barr saw the writing on the wall early.

“Ronna, good to see you!” [Alyssa] Farah said to the Republican National Committee chairwoman.

“Hey, good to see you,” McDaniel said. Then, as she turned away, McDaniel said, “Things are not looking good.”

William P. Barr had the same feeling. The attorney general had shown up for Trump’s election night party, even though he had thought for months that Trump was destined to become a one-term president. Trump didn’t seem able to get out of his own way and deliver a disciplined message. Barr hung around the party for a bit, but a little after 10 p.m. decided to call it a night. He went home to get some sleep.

6. Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley was warned of “fifth-rate people” at the White House by a military friend.

“You are an island unto yourself right now,” the friend said, according to the account Milley shared with aides. “You are not tethered. Your loyalty is to the Constitution. You represent the stability of this republic.”

Milley’s friend added: “There’s fourth-rate people at the Pentagon. And you have fifth-rate people at the White House. You’re surrounded by total incompetence. Hang in there. Hang tough.”

7. Trump was so incensed by Fox News calling Arizona for Biden that he tried to have Rupert Murdoch “reverse this.”

That hardly reassured the president. “What the f— is Fox doing?” Trump screamed. Then he barked orders to Kushner: “Call Rupert! Call James and Lachlan!” And to Jason Miller: “Get Sammon. Get Hemmer. They’ve got to reverse this.” The president was referring to Fox owner Rupert Murdoch and his sons, James and Lachlan, as well as Bill Sammon, a top news executive at Fox.

Trump’s tirade continued. “What the f—?” he bellowed. “What the f— are these guys doing? How could they call this this early?”

8. As Trump saw his early lead shrink with mail-in ballots being counted, he began to claim the election was being stolen.

“Why are they still counting votes?” Trump asked. “The election’s closed. Are they counting ballots that came in afterward? What the hell is going on?” Trump, through a spokesman, denied saying this.

The president told Conway that he thought something nefarious was at play.

“They’re stealing this from us,” Trump said. “We have this thing won. I won in a landslide and they’re taking it back.”

9. Eric Trump reportedly berated a campaign data analyst as he claimed the election was stolen.

“The election is being stolen,” the president’s 36-year-old son said. “Where are these votes coming from? How is this legit?”

He yelled at the campaign’s data analysts, as if it were their fault that his father’s early leads over Biden were shrinking. ”“We pay you to do this,” he said. “How can this be happening?

Eric Trump, through a spokesperson, insisted that he did not berate campaign staff, as described by witnesses.

Donald Trump Jr. said, “There’s no way we lose to this guy,” referring to Biden.

There is far more revealed in just this one chapter, and anyone interested in reading even more great details should click through and pay the nominal monthly subscription fee because, as some say, democracy dies in darkness.