Mark Meadows was a perplexing figure to many in the White House from the minute he became chief of staff, in March of 2020, just as the biggest crisis of Trump’s Presidency-the COVID-19 pandemic-hit. “Evil always looks like the victor until the King of Kings triumphs.
“This is a fight of good versus evil,” Meadows texted her. The next day, however, Meadows told Ginni Thomas-the far-right activist and wife of the Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas-that the battle to keep Trump in power was a messianic struggle. “I think he is becoming more realistic and knows there is a limit on how far he can take things,” Meadows replied. When Barr expressed alarm to Meadows that Trump was taking “bullshit” fraud claims too far, the chief of staff soothed him. “He was bringing crazies into the West Wing.” Just kind of give him time to mourn and grieve, and then he’s gonna come around.’ ” But while he was telling this to Republicans such as the Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the White House colleague pointed out, he was also facilitating the ongoing plot. ‘Trust me, I’m gonna get the President there, he’s gonna drop this issue. “He’s sort of just let in anybody and everybody who wanted to come in.” A White House colleague of his said, “Meadows admitted to people privately . . . “Meadows was basically a matador,” a Republican involved in discussions with the White House at the time told us. Meadows acted less as a gatekeeper than as a door opener. (A spokesperson for Meadows declined to comment on the record for this article.) At the same time, he gave conspirators access to the Oval Office to whisper their “you really won, don’t give up” fantasies to the defeated President. He reassured establishment Republicans that he was trying to keep the President from going too far. He told both sides what they wanted to hear. In our new book, “ The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021,” which will be published in September, my husband and I write that Meadows played a double game the likes of which has rarely been seen, even in the swamps of Washington.
And Meadows still refuses to disavow them, creating a sharp contrast with several other important Trump advisers: Pat Cipollone, the White House counsel who reportedly served as an important internal challenge to the false election claims William Barr, the staunchly pro-Trump Attorney General who finally broke with him over the election lies or, of course, Mike Pence, the slavishly loyal Vice-President, who did everything that Trump asked him to do for fourteen hundred and forty-seven days before finally reaching the line he could not cross and defying him. But the record is equally clear that Meadows never shut down Trump’s inflammatory claims. There is no doubt that Trump himself bears responsibility for his reckless pursuit of the “rigged election” fever dream-an assault on the most important foundation of American democracy, which Trump personally began laying the groundwork for months before the election had even taken place. Many times over the past few months, while writing a book with my husband, Peter Baker, about Trump’s Presidency and contemplating its violent, hardly-to-be-believed end, I got stuck on this question.
Was he seeking to get the country to Joe Biden’s Inauguration, despite the efforts of an increasingly unhinged President, or was he a charter member of the plot? Was he one of the responsible adults around Trump trying to land the plane safely, as General Mark Milley had put it, or was he one of the hijackers? At the same time, there has remained a question about just where Meadows actually stood.