Rove was the political mastermind of the George W. Bush administration, and was on top of the Trump list of party doyens targeted for frequent slurs. (“He looks so fucking stupid up there with that white board,” Trump would reliably mock Rove for his election night appearances doing hand tallies on Fox News.) But he was a professional, something in short supply in Trumpworld.

At the raging high point of the coronavirus pandemic, Rove, from his home in Texas, got himself to Washington, DC, for what was to be a secret meeting with the president. Except that, when he was shown into the Oval Office, a dumbfounded Rove found fifteen people there. Rove had spent eight years in an office near the Oval when it was a place of formal and select purpose. This was a bus station. Or, as Trump aides, as confounded as anyone by the Oval Office’s crowds, ado, and unlikely characters, often put it, the Star Wars bar scene.

There was Parscale and Kushner; Ronna McDaniel, the Trump-picked head of the Republican National Committee; Mark Meadows, the newly appointed chief of staff; Dan Scavino, who managed the president’s Twitter accounts; Hope Hicks, the president’s personal advisor and hand-holder; and a slew of others Rove didn’t know.

The president—to Rove’s ear, sounding like Alec Baldwin’s Saturday Night Live impersonation of him, an impersonation (of the impersonation) that Rove himself would often perform—outlined the dilemma: He had come to understand that the Democrats wanted him to attack Biden so as to weaken and destroy him. And then, when he had destroyed “Sleepy Joe” as only Trump could, the Democrats’ plan, he had it on super-secret authority, was to replace Biden as the nominee with … Andrew Cuomo. The governor of New York had been leading a popular daily television rebuttal to the White House’s COVID response—a constant affront to the president.

“Even assuming they wanted to do this,” said Rove, astonished by the ludicrousness of the assumption, “why would Bernie Sanders”—the clear Democratic runner-up—“allow it to happen?”

“Because,” the agitated president said, lowering his voice, “this is all being coordinated by the Obamas. And,” Trump added, more darkly “there is a very good chance that Michelle will go on the Cuomo ticket as VP.”

As respectfully as he could, Rove offered that he found this to be, to say the least, a bizarre theory. Trump, with his signature shmear of flattery, acknowledged Rove’s reservations, piling it on about his being the smartest, and yet the president was dead set on believing that here was an exceedingly clever conspiracy to bring him down—yet another one!