Trump administration chief of staff Mark Meadows said he had to talk former President Donald Trump out of yanking Justice Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court nomination, not over liberal attacks, but because he said, "I liked beer."
Trump wanted to move on to a "stronger candidate," according to Meadows' new book "The Chief's Chief," which was officially released Tuesday.
Meadows said Trump "strongly considered" dropping Kavanaugh because he was too apologetic to the liberal attacks on his character and the fact Kavanaugh admitted in the confirmation hearing "I liked beer; I still like beer," Politico reported.
Democrats and mainstream media attacks on Kavanaugh homed in on Christine Blasey Ford's allegations of sexual assault at a party decades ago, but it was Kavanaugh's beer remark that left Trump "extremely put off," according to Meadows' book.
Meadows, then a member of Congress, talked Trump out of it because the "blowback would be severe," according to Politico's report.
Among the other revelations in the book, Meadows wrote about Trump's COVID-19 infection that led to a stay at Walter Reed Medical Center at the peak of the 2020 presidential election campaign.
"It was clear that the staff at Walter Reed was prepared for a long stay — weeks, maybe longer," Meadows wrote, according to Politico. "I wasn't happy to hear that, but I also knew it probably wasn't going to happen. If the president had his way, we would be up and out the door in a day or so."
Meadows also detailed how Trump was "furious" over media reports he retreated to a White House bunker during the George Floyd riots in Washington, D.C., noting the leak from the White House likely came from Vice President Mike Pence's staff that did not understand how the Secret Service worked.
Trump was once ushered from the James Brady Briefing Room by the Secret Service in the middle of a daily coronavirus press briefing when there was an officer-involved shooting outside the White House, as a matter of protocol.
"'I could already tell, based on the way the story was reported, that the leaker was probably not someone with first-hand knowledge of Secret Service protocols," Meadows wrote about the "bunker" report. "To this day, everyone has a theory about where the leak came from. If I had to bet, I would say that it was probably Stephanie Grisham, Emma Doyle, or someone from the VP's team."
Grisham was chief of staff to the first lady, and Doyle was deputy chief of staff for policy to the first lady in the White House at the time, according to Politico. Grisham has since come out with a book critical of Trump.
Meadow's book recounts a somber conversation between the two after President Joe Biden's botched Afghanistan withdrawal led to a deadly terrorist suicide bombing costing lives of American servicemembers.
Trump instructed Meadows in that call to start preparing for a new Trump administration and finding high-level staffers.
"In short, I was given the task of finding secretaries and undersecretaries who wouldn't undercut the president," Meadows wrote.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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