After the press reported details of his trip to the White House bunker during Black Lives Matter protests last spring, former President Donald Trump reportedly screamed at aides to find whoever leaked the story, and claimed he or she should be "executed" and "charged with treason," CNN reports via the new book Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost.
In the days that followed Trump's trip underground, the ex-president reportedly called a "tense" meeting with top military, law enforcement, and West Wing advisers to lament the press leak.
He then "boiled over about the bunker story as soon as they arrived and shouted at them to smoke out whoever had leaked it. It was the most upset some aides had ever seen the president," writes the book's author and Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Bender. "Whoever did that, they should be charged with treason!" Trump reportedly yelled. "They should be executed!"
Former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows "repeatedly tried to calm the president," telling his boss, "I'm on it. We're going to find out who did it." Those who heard Trump obsess over Meadows' efforts in the days to come reportedly viewed his outburst "as a sign of a president in panic."
Trump later told Fox News radio he was only down in the bunker to "inspect" it, something he had done "two and a half times" before.