During a call with President Trump and other governors about nationwide racial justice protests, Maine Gov. Janet Mills thought the president was “having a nervous breakdown or something,” according to a new book about the 2020 election and first year of the Biden presidency.

“This Will Not Pass” by New York Times journalists Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns depicts Trump as “a mafia don, demanding loyalty from supplicants and political opponents alike, by turns using the largest bully pulpit in the world to beat them into submission and cajoling them in private to offer support,” according to The Hill, which obtained a copy of the book prior to its release Tuesday.

Martin and Burns recount interactions between a number of governors and Trump, including a phone call with governors after nationwide protests following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Trump demanded the governors crack down to restore order in their states, according to the report in The Hill.

Mills, a Democrat, called a security guard into the room to listen in on the call.

“You gotta sit here and listen to this because I think the president of the United States is having a nervous breakdown or something, and it’s scary,” Mills recalled telling the guard, according to the book.

During that same call, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown, a Democrat, thought Trump’s rant was so unhinged that she called her husband into the room to listen, according to the authors.

The Hill reported that spokespeople for the governors quoted in the book either confirmed their recollection of the events or declined to deny those recollections.


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