A new book from New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman claims that former President Donald Trump planned to blockade himself in the White House and refuse to leave despite his loss to President Joe Biden in the 2020 election.
CNN reports that White House aides told Haberman that Trump said multiple times that he would not leave the White House to make way for Biden, even though Trump had lost every court challenge and Biden had been certified as the winner of the election.
"I'm just not going to leave," Trump told one aide who spoke with Haberman.
"We're never leaving," Trump told a separate aide. "How can you leave when you won an election?"
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One source also told Haberman that they heard Trump apparently rebuking RNC Chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel about the possibility of leaving the White House, and he asked her, "Why should I leave if they stole it from me?"
Additionally, Haberman reports that Trump initially seemed to accept that he actually did lose to Biden in the immediate aftermath of his defeat, as he also told aides that "we did our best" and "I thought we had it" about the failed re-election effort.
However, the twice-impeached former president's tone gradually shifted and he became intent on staying in the White House while defiantly claiming the election had been stolen from him despite no evidence to support this claim.
Haberman's book, titled "Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America," is due to be released on October 4th.
