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Trump Officials Rush to Keep Him From Sparking Another Conflict, The Daily Beast
https://www.thedailybeast.com/after-capitol-riot-trump-officials-rush-to-keep-him-from-sparking-another-conflictat-home-or-abroad
High-ranking national-security officials have spent the last 24 hours scrambling to figure out how to keep their commander-in-chief, Donald Trump, from inciting further violence at home, spilling national secrets, or sparking last-minute confrontations with international foes.
The concerns in the upper echelons of the administration’s national-security community range from fears inside the Pentagon that the president will do or say something that effectively throws the U.S. into a military confrontation with another country to anxieties in the intelligence apparatus that Trump will divulge classified intelligence on his way out, according to four officials who spoke with The Daily Beast about the matter. All requested to remain anonymous in order to speak more openly about the discussions.
“This isn’t a hypothetical anymore,” said one senior administration official. “This is real. What happened yesterday changed the calculus. People are concerned about [the president’s] state of mind.”
For those who have decided to stay on, their main focus is preventing President Trump from pushing the country further into chaos. The fears, some of which were laid out by Axios on Thursday, have grown so intense over the last day that officials have contacted leading lawmakers on Capitol Hill to informally brief them about the situation, according to two congressional aides familiar with the matter.
“The president was trying to stage a coup. There was little chance of it happening, but there was enough chance that the former defense secretaries had to put out that letter, which was the final nail through that effort. They prevented the military from being involved in any coup attempt. But instead, Trump tried to incite it himself,” said Fiona Hill, Trump’s former top Russia adviser. “This could have turned into a full-blown coup had he had any of those key institutions following him. Just because it failed or didn’t succeed doesn’t mean it wasn’t real.”
The concerns in the upper echelons of the administration’s national-security community range from fears inside the Pentagon that the president will do or say something that effectively throws the U.S. into a military confrontation with another country to anxieties in the intelligence apparatus that Trump will divulge classified intelligence on his way out, according to four officials who spoke with The Daily Beast about the matter. All requested to remain anonymous in order to speak more openly about the discussions.
“This isn’t a hypothetical anymore,” said one senior administration official. “This is real. What happened yesterday changed the calculus. People are concerned about [the president’s] state of mind.”
For those who have decided to stay on, their main focus is preventing President Trump from pushing the country further into chaos. The fears, some of which were laid out by Axios on Thursday, have grown so intense over the last day that officials have contacted leading lawmakers on Capitol Hill to informally brief them about the situation, according to two congressional aides familiar with the matter.
“The president was trying to stage a coup. There was little chance of it happening, but there was enough chance that the former defense secretaries had to put out that letter, which was the final nail through that effort. They prevented the military from being involved in any coup attempt. But instead, Trump tried to incite it himself,” said Fiona Hill, Trump’s former top Russia adviser. “This could have turned into a full-blown coup had he had any of those key institutions following him. Just because it failed or didn’t succeed doesn’t mean it wasn’t real.”
3 minute clip of Fiona Hill on Amanpour and Company
https://www.pbs.org/wnet/amanpour-and-company/video/fiona-hill-weve-got-pull-country-back-together-hux0dq/
There is a 50 minute video interview of Fiona Hill on PBS Amanpour and Company, but you need to be a PBS member to access it
https://www.pbs.org/video/january-8-2021-dq8xti/
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