Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani reportedly "infuriated" former President Donald Trump's advisers by urging him to simply declare he won on election night 2020 "based on nothing."
An excerpt from the book I Alone Can Fix It published in The Washington Post Tuesday recounts election night 2020 inside the Trump campaign, describing how Giuliani started telling other guests at the White House's viewing party that he had "come up with a strategy for Trump and was trying to get into the president's private quarters to tell him about it." Some "thought Giuliani may have been drinking too much," according to the book.
Giuliani reportedly then presented this strategy to Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, and senior adviser Jason Miller, urging them to prematurely declare victory in multiple states even though votes were still being counted and projections hadn't been made.
"Giuliani's grand plan was to just say Trump won, state after state, based on nothing," the book says. "Stepien, Miller and Meadows thought his argument was both incoherent and irresponsible."
In fact, Meadows reportedly raised his voice as he told Giuliani, "We can't do that. We can't." Later, though, Giuliani reportedly directly pushed Trump to deliver a premature victory speech, telling him, "Just go declare victory right now." Trump advisers, the book says, were "infuriated," but Trump ultimately did deliver a speech in which he falsely claimed to have won the election.
"It's hard to be the responsible parent when there's a cool uncle around taking the kid to the movies and driving him around in a Corvette," a Trump adviser said. "When we say the president can't say that, being responsible is not the easiest place to be when you've got people telling the president what he wants to hear. It's hard to tell the president no. It's not an enviable place to be." Read more at The Washington Post.