It may seem odd to say that complicity-rather than defiance-is the main message of “Peril,” because so much of the pre-publication attention has been paid to scenes involving General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which were highlighted in an excerpt published in the Washington Post. And he tells Trump that he thinks impeachment isn’t “going anywhere.”

McCarthy went to Florida with the hope of keeping Trump involved with the House G.O.P. (So did Cruz.) A week after that, McCarthy said publicly that Trump bore some “responsibility” for the assault, but the visit to Mar-a-Lago seems to have been meant to walk back that statement, mild as it was. On January 6th, after the rioters had finally been cleared from the Capitol, the members of the House and the Senate had returned to their chambers, and the tallying of Electoral College votes had resumed, McCarthy persisted in voting to reject the electors of Arizona and Pennsylvania. (They don’t.) Barr had gone to the Oval Office to urge Trump to focus on his reëlection and to reconnect with the voters who loved him rather than become “a captive of the Beltway.” Conway was giving him strategic advice for the next time he ran. During the steakhouse phone call, which took place in December, 2020, Cruz agrees to argue the President’s election-fraud case before the Supreme Court, if the Justices take it.

The second function of those moments is to point to one of the major, if less-examined, themes of “Peril”: the cozy, woozy, familiar complacency of leading Republicans when it comes to Trump, which persists long past the point when his contempt for American democracy has become clear. Who but someone very close to the events would know about the bun? That is true of many other such moments in “ Peril,” such as when Senator Ted Cruz “was at a steakhouse, in the middle of dinner, when the President called.” And when, before a meeting with Trump, Attorney General Bill Barr steeled himself “in the little dining room off the Oval Office.” Or when Kellyanne Conway called Trump at Walter Reed, where he was being treated for COVID-19, and said to him, “Enjoy your hospital food.” No word on whether they served ice cream. First, it stands, as do many slice-of-life vignettes in this and other books in the Woodward œuvre, as a legitimator of sourcing. But the function of the exchange, in the book, is different, and twofold. Or, perhaps, for a planner of political lunches, the information that Trump still likes ice cream but may be losing his taste for hamburger buns counts as news you can use. Maybe there’s a grand metaphor here: there are times when Trump makes healthy choices and times when he doesn’t.

Bob woodwards latest book