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- Mike Pompeo was worried that Trump would try to go to war to stay in power after losing in 2020, a new book reveals.
- In public, however, Pompeo made overtures to back Trump's false election fraud claims.
- Another forthcoming book also reports that the US's top general warned against a conflict with Iran.
- See more stories on Insider's business page.
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo expressed concerns to at least one person that former President Donald Trump would enter into a foreign conflict to try and stay in office after losing the 2020 election, according to Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Bender's new book "Frankly We Did Win This Election."
Both "Frankly We Did Win This Election" and other forthcoming books on the Trump presidency detailed similar fears of war and foreign unrest within the Joint Chiefs of Staff and intelligence community.
Trump fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper after the election, alienating another adviser David Urban, who told the former president's son-in-law and senior advisor Jared Kushner that it was "a d— move" that made Trump "look out of control," according to Bender's book.
He also wrote that both Pompeo and Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, feared that the new officials brought into the Defense Department and White House were conspiracy theorists and could even have "links to neo-Nazi groups."
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Pompeo told at least one other State Department official that "the crazies have taken over" the White House, Bender reported, and pushed to speak daily with Milley and White House chief of staff Mark Meadows about "hot spots overseas" to try and prevent more unrest from breaking out.
However, Pompeo took a different tone in public.
On November 10, three days after all major news outlets and TV networks had called the 2020 election for President Joe Biden, Pompeo said during a press conference at the State Department that "we're going to count all the votes" and promised "a smooth transition to a second Trump Administration."
An excerpt of an upcoming book by the New Yorker's Susan Glaser and The New York Times' Peter Baker reported that Trump advisors floated more military action in Iran after the election, with Milley repeatedly warning: "If you do this, you're gonna have a f---ing war."
Milley and other top US generals were also afraid that Trump could take his desire to overturn the 2020 election to the point of leading a coup, according to an excerpt of the book "I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump's Catastrophic Final Year" by Washington Post reporters Phillip Rucker and Carol Leonnig that was published by CNN. Some top officials even prepared to resign en masse if necessary, the authors wrote.
Trump, issued a lengthy statement last week, saying that he "isn't into coups" and clarifying that even if he was, he wouldn't make such a move with Milley, who he described as having "no courage or skill."
Another recently published excerpt of "I Alone Can Fix It" revealed that Milley likened Trump to German dictator Adolf Hitler, describing Trump's refusal to accept the result of the 2020 election and his blatant efforts to subvert it as "the gospel of the Führer."
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