Revealed: Trump exposed military secrets out of rage

The shocking tape obtained by CNN that shows him boasting to patrons of his Bedminster golf club about possessing an Iranian battle plan offers the answer, argued Susan Glasser for The New Yorker: he wanted to discredit Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Mark Milley, after months of behind-the-scenes drama that left the former president enraged at Milley's refusal to enable his worst impulses.

"The damning evidence against Trump would not exist if not for his rift with Mark Milley, a remarkable feud between the Commander-in-Chief and the nation’s top general that had been a secret backdrop to the public drama that played out after the 2020 election," wrote Glasser. "At the time the tape was made, in the summer of 2021, Trump was apoplectic that Milley’s fears about him were becoming public. Two recently published books — one by the journalists Carol Leonnig and Phil Rucker of the Post, and the other by Michael Bender, then of the Wall Street Journal — had reported new details about Milley’s efforts, including regular 'land the plane' phone calls with Meadows, the White House chief of staff, to prevent Trump from drawing the military into his quest to overturn the 2020 election."