NYT Politics Reporter’s New Book Highlights Trump’s Move From Accepting To Rejecting Election Loss

Former President Donald Trump told aides he was not intending to leave the White House after his defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election, CNN reported Monday, after obtaining a new book by New York TimesNYT
reporter Maggie Haberman.

According to Haberman’s book, “Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America,” Trump appeared at first to accept that he’d lost the election, asking advisers to tell him what had gone wrong. Haberman says at one point Trump seemed to try and comfort one adviser, saying “we did our best” and telling another “I thought we had it.”

But eventually Trump resolved to overturn the election results. “We’re never leaving,” Trump told advisers inside the White House. “How can you leave when you won an election?”

“This left aides confused and uncertain about what he would do next,” said CNN correspondent Kristen Holmes on CNN’s New Day Monday morning.

On November 26, 2020, a reporter asked Trump whether he would leave the White House if the Electoral College voted for Biden. “Certainly I will, and you know that,” he responded. But in private, Trump was searching for a path to secure a second term in office.

According to Haberman’s book—to be released October 4—Trump was even overheard asking the chair of the Republican National Committee, Ronna McDaniel, “Why should I leave if they stole it from me?”