JUDY WOODRUFF: It has been
nearly six months since Donald
Trump left Washington, after

losing the presidential race to Joe Biden.

And, for months, the former
president has falsely claimed
the election was rigged against

him. But his defeat and his
chaotic, controversial final year
in office is the focus of a new

book, "Frankly, We Did Win This
Election: The Inside Story of
How Trump Lost, " by Michael

Bender of The Wall Street Journal.

His book is out today.
And he joins us now.

Michael Bender, welcome to the "NewsHour."

It was a famous quote the
president gave as he was talking
on television after it was

becoming clear he had lost, but he goes
before the American people to say: I won.

It was the beginning of this
process of denial, wasn't it?

MICHAEL C. BENDER, Author,
"Frankly, We Did Win This
Election: The Inside Story of How

Trump Lost": Yes, that's right.

I mean, it was an unscripted line uttered
after 2:00 in the morning. He didn't even

want to come down to address
the nation and the guests at
the White House, where he was

planning a victory party.

And he decided on stage to
blurt out that he had won the
election, obviously quite falsely,

And that set off a chain of reactions for
the next six months into 2021.

JUDY WOODRUFF: I mean, the book is just a
remarkable collection of stories.

You follow the administration,
the campaign. You spent --
you had a number of interviews

with him in person. You talked
to, what, over 150 people
working for him. And you paint

this picture of this chaotic, disorganized
campaign that never really could settle on

a message or a strategy,
and surrounded by people who
basically didn't stand up to this

president.

MICHAEL C. BENDER: This book
focuses on 2020, but it is informed
by over five years of covering

him and the people around him,
and use a lot of the stories to
give context to what happened

in 2020.

And you mentioned the chaos of
the Trump administration. It was
beyond chaos. And the people closest

to him thought he was, at
different points of the year, a
danger to the country and tried

various ways to stop him or to keep him in
line and tried to act as guardrails, some

without very much success.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And, as we said,
many of them were afraid to
stand up to him. But, as you

point out, Michael Bender, some were.

You have that really fascinating
episode in here where he is
with General Mark Milley,

the chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff. This is after the
death of George Floyd. There

are protests all around the
country. The president is saying to
him and others, we need to crack

their heads, talking about the protesters,
shoot them if necessary.

And Milley says no.

MICHAEL C. BENDER: That's right.

This is in June of 2020. If you
recall, it's - - Trump opened
up the year in 2020 really

primed for reelection. Yes, he
had just been impeached, but he
survived it and was thriving.

His poll numbers were as high as they had
ever been. The issue that he wanted to run

on was the economy. And
the economy was red-hot.

And then, suddenly, COVID struck,
George Floyd was killed, and
triggered massive civil rights

protests. The economy tanked.
And he struggled to find a
message. And what played out was

that he lashed out at the
people around him. He tried to
get back to his law and order

image at any cost.

And you're right. It fell to
General Mark Milley. The top
general in the world's most

powerful military was the only
one who could sit in front
of Trump and tell him no.

And there's one, I think, very
resonant scene in the book.
He points to the portrait of

Abraham Lincoln behind Trump
and tells him: "That, man,
sir, had an insurrection. What

we have is a protest."

JUDY WOODRUFF: And this is when
they were discussing whether
to invoke the Insurrection

Act.

And you mentioned COVID., of
course, all this taking place
during the pandemic. It turns

out, from your reporting, the
president was tested -- had
tested positive for COVID before

it was made public, and went on
to do a fund-raiser in Bedminster,
New Jersey, where he has a

home.

Why did that -- why was
that allowed to happen?

MICHAEL C. BENDER: There was
very few people around him at
that point who were in a position

to tell him no.

He had -- anyone who was pushing
back on the president -- this is
year four in the administration

- - was long gone, and even,
you can argue, in those first
three years, didn't happen

all that effectively.

So, on that morning, when his
-- some of his senior aides --
one of his senior aides test

positive, it's kind of chaos in the White
House. And Trump -- this is new reporting

in this book -- had several
false positive tests throughout
the year. And some -- several

people tell me that Trump tested positive
that morning and assumed it was false, and

had another test show negative,
and then he left her Bedminster.

That account is disputed. But,
Judy, even the fact that we
have competing accounts of

whether or not the president tested -- or
tested positive for COVID the morning his

- - one of his top aides was
sick, I mean, is a story in
itself and tells you a lot about

the struggle to address one of the -- the
biggest health crisis in the country in a

century.

JUDY WOODRUFF: There is a fair
amount of -- a lot of time spent
in the book, Michael Bender,

on sort of the unraveling at the end,
after the election results are known.

People around the president,
as we said, are just not able
to say directly to him "You

lost" in a way that he would
even hear. And then you see
the rise of Rudy Giuliani.

What was going on at that moment?

MICHAEL C. BENDER: People who
were around him in a position
to act as these guardrails

never quite told him no directly.
They always sort of left a
little wiggle room that this

president heard and latched on to.

And so those first couple of
weeks after the election, you
had Vice President Mike Pence,

you had Ronna McDaniel, the
Republican National Committee woman,
even Mark Milley, to a degree,

leaving the Oval Office saying,
you know what, the president
just needs a little bit of space,

give him time, and he will get to a -- he
will get to this himself, he will find his

own path out of this.

But they gave him space. And
what that did was create an
opening for Rudy Giuliani and

some of these characters to
come in and tell the president
exactly what he wanted to hear.

JUDY WOODRUFF: We hear Donald
Trump now teasing a lot about
whether he's going to run for

president again in 2024.

How does that keep him at the
center of what's going on in
the Republican Party? And do you

think he will run again?

MICHAEL C. BENDER: Yes, I mean,
that's where it comes back
to, is -- you're right, Judy

- - is, he wants to be the
center of attention about what
we're -- what people are talking

about, about the subject of the headlines,
right?

And one of the things I try
to do in the book here is show
how Trump's priority from day

one was to win reelection.
And very few people around him
shared that priority. They all

had their different reasons for wanting to
be around Trump, mostly their own personal

reasons.

But Trump is going to -- he
has to wait to see what happens
in 2022, because, right now,

the Republican Party has a choice.
Are they or are they not going
to try to redefine themselves

post-Trump? And how they answer
that question will inform
what Trump decides in 2024.

And I think what this book
does is provide new information
and a new set of data points

that shows that Republicans,
when they make this decision,
are doing it with their eyes

wide open. They know who this president is
and, after reading this book, what kind of

political candidate he is.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, it is a book full of
astonishing stories, "Frankly, We Did Win

This Election: The Inside
Story of How Trump Lost."

Michael Bender, thank you very much.

MICHAEL C. BENDER: Thanks for having me.