Donald Trump reportedly found himself on thin ice in October 2019 as Republicans seriously considered voting to impeach him over the Ukraine extortion scheme, and his chief of staff arranged a meeting with some of those on-the-fence GOP lawmakers.
The former president had further inflamed tensions by publicly announcing that he would hold the next G-7 summit at his Miami gold resort, and acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney brought a group of moderate Republicans to Camp David -- but Trump himself didn't show, according to excerpts from a new book by Politico’s Rachael Bade and The Washington Post’s Karoun Demirjian that were published by NBC News.
“Who would want to go there?” Trump said, according to the book.
But Mulvaney, himself a former House member, understood the importance of presidential invitations and the allure of the seldom-seen presidential retreat, but the group of lawmakers immediately "charged the president’s chief of staff like a pack of wolves" at the retreat, according to “Unchecked: The Untold Story Behind Congress’s Botched Impeachments of Donald Trump".
“Hell of a week. Can we try a little harder here? Like really, Mick?” said Rep. Ann Wagner (R-MO) while huddled around a campfire with other lawmakers.
The Doral announcement angered centrists who were already uneasy about defending Trump on Ukraine, and the G-7 summit would pump foreign money into the president's family-owned business in likely violation of the Constitution's Emoluments Clause.
“The backlash, Mulvaney realized, was going to jeopardize the tenuous GOP coalition that they needed to keep intact in order to defend Trump from the impeachment inquiry," the authors wrote. "He knew that if Trump kept acting out, some members would find it impossible to keep resisting the pressure to support at least the framework of an investigation.”
Trump called the lawmakers, some of whom were shocked that he was seeking their input.
“Why don’t you think it’s a good idea?” Trump asked, according to the book. “It’s a great venue! Everyone will love it!”
Wagner told the former president they didn't want to defend him on that -- certainly not while impeachment was looming -- but Trump, who was surprised by their resistance, eventually came around and called them back at Camp David to workshop a tweet announcing his reversal.
“All right. I’m going to tweet something like this out," Trump said, according to the book. "How does this tweet sound?”
In the end, not one House Republican voted in favor of launching the first impeachment inquiry or for any of the impeachment articles passed by the Democratic majority.
