'This has to stop': Ivanka Trump repeatedly tried to convince Trump to tell his supporters to leave the Capitol on January 6, book says
Ivanka Trump repeatedly tried to persuade her father and then-boss to tell his supporters storming the Capitol on January 6 to leave the complex, according to an excerpt of a book by the Washington Post journalists Carol D. Leonnig and Philip Rucker.
Leonnig and Rucker wrote in the excerpt, published by the newspaper on Thursday, that Ivanka, then a senior advisor to President Donald Trump, left her second-floor office in the White House after she saw on TV that a mob had breached the Capitol. She wanted to find him and convince him to speak forcefully against the violence, the excerpt said.
"I'm going down to my dad. This has to stop," she reportedly told her aides.
But she ended up spending "several hours walking back and forth" to the Oval Office trying to convince Trump to order his supporters to stand down, the excerpt said.
Mark Meadows, then the White House chief of staff, would at times call her to come downstairs to get through to Trump, the book says.
"I need you to come back down here," Meadows reportedly told her. "We've got to get this under control."
Meadows would direct other Trump aides to leave the room, saying, "I only want Ivanka, myself and the president in here," Leonnig and Rucker wrote.
One White House advisor said Ivanka "was described to me like a stable pony," the excerpt said. "When the racehorse gets too agitated, you bring the stable pony in to calm him down," the advisor was quoted as saying.
GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Trump's ally, called Ivanka numerous times before she answered, the excerpt said.
"You need to tell him to tell these people to leave," Graham reportedly said.
"We're working on it," Ivanka responded.
Hours before the violence broke out, Trump had pushed Vice President Mike Pence to do something out of his power: block the 2020 electoral certification in Congress. Ivanka took issue with the situation, the excerpt said.
"This is not right. It's not right," Ivanka reportedly said that morning.
"Mike Pence is a good man," she later told Keith Kellogg, a White House aide, the excerpt said.
Trump was unmoved. As the riot unfolded, he attacked Pence in a tweet. In two later tweets, he said the mob should "stay peaceful" and "respect the Law." Then he tweeted a video telling his supporters to "go home," calling them "special."
Leonnig and Rucker said they spoke to more than 140 sources for their book, "I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump's Catastrophic Final Year," which comes out Tuesday.
