Former President Donald Trump’s longtime adviser Rudy Giuliani reportedly told campaign aides to “just say we won” while votes were still being counted.
In the “I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year” book, journalists for The Washington Post, Carol Leonning and Phillip Rucker, reported on the events.
“Giuliani went state by state asking Stepien, Meadows, and Miller what they were seeing and what their plan was,” they wrote.
“What’s happening in Michigan?” Giuliani asked.
Stepien, Meadows, and Miller told him it was too early to tell as votes were still being counted.
Giuliani told them, “Just say we won.”
When discussing Pennsylvania, Giuliani said, “Just say we won Pennsylvania.”
The authors explained Stepien, Meadows, and Miller thought Giuliani’s argument was both “incoherent and irresponsible.”
Meadows then said, according to the book, “We can’t do that. We can’t.”
Trump declared victory even though millions of ballots had yet to be counted.
Leonning and Rucker reported on Trump’s attitude on the morning of Election Day, saying he was “upbeat,” adding, “The mood in the West Wing was good. Some aides talked giddily of a landslide.”
They also noted, “Trump’s voice was hoarse from his mad dash of rallies, but he thought his exhausting final sprint had sealed the deal. He considered Joe Biden to be a lot of things, but a winner most definitely was not one of them. ‘I can’t lose to this f****** guy,’ Trump told aides.”
Others saw that it was not looking good, including Republican National Committee Chairwoman (RNC) Ronna McDaniel and now-former Attorney General Bill Barr.
“Alyssa Farah, the White House communications director, stepped away from the party in the East Room and saw McDaniel pacing in the hallway,” the book reads.
According to the book, Farah said to the RNC chairwoman, “Ronna, good to see you!”
McDaniel then responded, “Hey, good to see you,” adding, “Things are not looking good.”
The book continues, “William P. Barr had the same feeling.”
The book also reads, recalling what occurred after Fox News called Arizona for Joe Biden:
“Giuliani pushed the president to forget about the Arizona call and just say he won — to step into the East Room and deliver a victory speech. Never mind that Meadows had earlier snapped at Giuliani and said the president couldn’t just declare himself the winner.
‘Just go declare victory right now,’ Giuliani told Trump. ‘You’ve got to go declare victory now.’
Giuliani’s interjection of his ‘just-say-you-won’ strategy infuriated Trump’s campaign advisers.”
One of Trump’s campaigner advisers said, according to the book, “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. 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.”