What does going into administration mean?

When a company goes into administration it means it has become insolvent and will be run  by an appointed administrator, who must be a licensed insolvency practitioner.

The administrator will work with the insolvent firm either to save it through some form of rescue procedure like a Company Voluntary Arrangement (CVA), sell the company to a new owner, or work with the company to wind it up.

If a company goes into administration, it won’t necessarily mean that the company will actually go out of business or stop trading altogether. But, usually it means you’ll find it more difficult to exercise your rights.

This applies even where we see a rapid purchase of a company that’s gone into administration, where on the surface it looks like it’s businesses as usual.

Can I return items to a retailer that's gone into administration?

It depends. Once a retailer goes into administration the administrator's role is to try and save the company, and in doing so, it may take the decision not to accept returns.

But you could ask for a refund if the things you bought weren't delivered, or you could claim for the cost of a repair if for faulty goods.

Do my return rights still apply after a company has gone into administration?

If you’ve been supplied with faulty goods and the company is placed into administration but is still trading, you may be able to get a replacement or a refund in the normal way under the Consumer Rights Act.

If the company isn’t trading while it’s in administration, you’ll need to make a claim to the administrator as an unsecured creditor, so it may be unlikely that you'll get a refund in this case.

But if you don’t submit a claim in writing to the administrators then it is highly unlikely that they will stand to get their money back. We think it’s worth at least trying.

If you have a faulty item, you could register your claim with the administrators for the cost of fixing the item, or for a refund if there's still time to reject the item.

Can I still use my warranty after a company has gone into administration?

If you bought an item that's faulty and it came with a warranty, you should be able to claim a refund or repair from the manufacturer under the terms of the warranty.

You may be able to make a claim on an extended warranty, if cover was provided by a third party (eg an insurance company).

If the retailer goes into administration and the goods are faulty, then your manufacturer's warranty should cover you for at least the first year. Check your documentation to see if this is the case.

Check the small print carefully to see who actually provided the warranty cover. Often it’s provided by a third party (an insurance company, for example) in which case you shouldn’t be affected if a store ceases trading.

If cover was provided by the retailer in question, then it depends on what happens at the end of the administration period. 

If the retailer ceases to trade, then unfortunately you would lose the benefit of the extended warranty.

Remember that you'll usually get a manufacturer’s certain with an item which will provide some protection for the first year - sometimes even longer.

Can I claim from my card company?

If you paid for goods that cost less than £100 on a credit or debit card, you may be able to claim under chargeback.

If you've bought something on your credit card costing more than £100, means the card provider is jointly responsible for any breaches of contract.

You can claim under Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act if the item is faulty.

Write to your credit card company with details of your claim. You can use our template letter to claim a refund from your credit card company if a retailer goes bust.

Can I claim if I only paid a deposit?

You don't have to have paid the full amount on your credit card – the card company is liable even if you made only part of the payment (a deposit, say) on your card.

It's the value of the goods you're buying that's key, not the amount paid on the card. 

Under Section 75, as long as the value of the product is between £100 and £30,000 then you'll be covered, regardless of how much you paid on your card.

So, for example, if you ordered a new camera and paid a £50 deposit with your credit card and paid the balance of £500 by cheque, you'd be covered for the whole £550 if the company went out of business and you didn't get your camera.

Can I still use my gift vouchers after a company has gone into administration?

A number of high street stores have refused to allow customers to use gift vouchers after going into administration. Unfortunately, this is within the law.

But, if the administrator take this decision it's worth waiting a few days to see if it will change it's mind.

If your gift vouchers are refused, you need to make a claim in writing to the administrators with proof of your vouchers.

You can find the name of the administrator on the website of the retailer that has gone into administration.

But there's no certain you'll get all of your money back, and it could take up to 12 months to process the claim properly. And, not all administrators will take this approach.

If you want to get your money back, you can use our template letter to claim a refund for vouchers from a bust company.

Can I make a chargeback claim for gift vouchers?

If a company is accepting gift vouchers then chargeback claims will not be accepted.

If gift vouchers aren't being accepted and you bought gift vouchers on your card, you should be able to put in a chargeback request to your bank on the grounds that the vouchers are fundamentally different to what you paid for.

This is because you expected to be able to exchange the vouchers for goods of a certain value and instead they're worthless.

If the vouchers were given to you as a gift, it's trickier to make this argument. The person who received a voucher as a gift can't make a claim. 

But the person who bought the vouchers could put in a chargeback request to the bank. You can use our letter template to help you make a chargeback claim.

It's worth noting though, that there's no certain the administrators will accept chargeback claims.

Can I get my cashback?

If you were supposed to get cashback as part of your purchase, it depends on how the cashback offer was set up - you may still receive it. 

Check the terms and conditions to see whether the offer is backed by the manufacturer (ie they'll send the cash as long as you claim in the way specified), or whether the cashback claim should be made to the retailer.

If the manufacturer is providing the cashback, your claim shouldn't be affected. 

If it's the retailer, you could still put in a claim and they would be in breach of contract if they didn't send the cash.

If you didn't get the cash, unfortunately you couldn't take court action against the retailer while it's in administration.

If at the end of the administration the retailer stopped trading, you'd need to lodge your claim for unpaid cashback with the administrators.  

Windows 11/10 users can operate their system as Administrators or Standard users. The main difference between standard and admin users is their privileges. While Administrator accounts give you access to everything on the machine, standard accounts are more restrictive.

How to switch Account User Type in Windows

You may need to change a user account from a Standard account to Admin and back for various reasons. If you’re wondering how to change your user account type, read this guide to the end.

We can change the account type of a user account in five easy ways. We’ll explore the following methods in this section:

1. Change a user account type between Standard and Admin from User Accounts.
2. Change a user account type between Standard and Admin from Settings.
3. Change a user account type between Standard and Admin from Control Panel.
4. Change a user account type between Standard and Admin from Command Prompt.
5. Change a user account type between Standard and Admin from PowerShell.

Below, we have broken the above methods of changing user account types into straightforward steps.

1] Change a user account type between Standard and Admin from User Accounts

The User Accounts settings area is perhaps the easiest place from which to change user account types between Standard and Administrative users. Here is how to perform this operation using the User Accounts settings.

Right-click the Start button and select Run. In the Run dialog box, type netplwiz and press ENTER. Choose the user account whose type you want to change and click on the Properties option.

Switch to the Group Membership tab in the Properties window. This is where you select the user account type or access level. Pick either Standard user, Administrator, or Other for even more options.

Hit Apply and Ok for the two open windows and restart your computer.

2] Change a user account type between Standard and Admin from Settings

In Windows 11:

1. Open Settings
2. Click open Accounts settings
3. On the right side, select Family and other users
4. Now locate the user account and click on it
5. Click on the Change account  type button that appears
6. In the popup, change the Account type and click OK.

In Windows 10, you can open Settings with the Windows Key, and I key combination. Go to Accounts and select Family & other users.

Find the user account you want to modify under Your family or Other users and click on it. Click on the Change account type button that’s revealed.

On the next screen, select your preferred user account type from the dropdown and click on the OK button below.

3] Change a user account type between Standard and Admin from the Control Panel

Search for Control Panel from the Start menu and open it. Next, click on the View by option at the top right and change it to Category. Click on User Accounts. If you see the Change account type under the option, select that, or choose it from the next screen.

Pick the user account that you want to change by clicking on it, and click on the Change the account type link.

From the new options that appear, choose either the Standard or Administrator options to set their corresponding user account type. Finally, click the Change Account Type button below. After successfully changing the account type, exit the Control Panel and be sure to restart your computer.

4] Change a user account type between Standard and Admin from Command Prompt

If you’re comfortable using Commands and don’t mind saving an extra click or two, then this and the next methods are for you. Here, we’re going to change the user account type using command-line functions.

First, run Command Prompt as an Administrator. Press the Windows key and search for Command Prompt. Right-click on Command Prompt and choose Run as an Administrator.

1. Change to a Standard user account

In the Command Prompt window, the following command changes the account type of the specified user to Standard.

net localgroup Administrators "ACCOUNT-NAME" /delete

NOTE: Replace ACCOUNT-NAME with the real name of the user account. Also, the account name of a Microsoft account is the first five letters of its email address.

2. Change to an Admin account

With the Command Prompt running with elevated privileges, type in the following command and hit the ENTER key:

net localgroup Administrators "ACCOUNT-NAME" /add

NOTE: Replace ACCOUNT-NAME with the real name of the user account. Also, the account name of a Microsoft account is the first five letters of its email address.

To confirm that the user account type has been changed, run this command. On running it, Command Prompt displays properties of the selected user account, including the user account types.

net user ACCOUNT-NAME

Exit Command Prompt now and reboot your computer. On the next Windows startup, you’ll notice the changes effected.

TIP: See this post if Change Account Type is greyed out in Windows.

5] Change a user account type between Standard and Admin from PowerShell

PowerShell works with few steps like the Command Prompt method. You can copy the commands and paste on the PowerShell window to avoid mistakes.

Press Windows key + X and select Windows PowerShell (Admin) from the context menu.

1. Change to Standard user

Copy and paste the following command line into the PowerShell window:

Remove-LocalGroupMember -Group "Administrators" -Member "ACCOUNT-NAME"

NOTE: Replace ACCOUNT-NAME with the real name of the user account. Also, the account name of a Microsoft account is the first five letters of its email address.

2. Change the user to an Administrator

Open PowerShell as an Administrator. Enter and run the command below in PowerShell:

Add-LocalGroupMember -Group "Administrators" -Member "ACCOUNT-NAME"

Finally, you can close Command Prompt and restart your machine. You can make use of any method you find easiest to follow.

If you still feel like learning more similar tips, read this guide on deleting the inbuilt Administrator account.

Editorial Note: We earn a commission from partner links on Forbes Advisor. Commissions do not affect our editors' opinions or evaluations.

Mary Divine is a reporter for the St. Paul Pioneer Press. She covers Washington County and the St. Croix River Valley, but has also spent time covering the state Capitol. She has won numerous journalism awards, including the Premack Award and the Minnesota Society of Professional Journalists' Page One Award. Prior to joining the Pioneer Press in 1998, she worked for the Rochester, Minn., Post-Bulletin and at the St. Joseph, Mo., News-Press. Her work has also appeared in a number of magazines, including Mpls/St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Business Monthly and Minnesota Magazine. She is a graduate of Carleton College and lives in St. Paul with her husband, Greg Myers, and their three children, Henry, Frances and Fred.

The Biden administration unveiled a regulatory proposal late Friday targeting water heaters, the latest in a string of energy efficiency actions cracking down on home appliances.

The Department of Energy (DOE) said its proposal would ultimately "accelerate deployment" of electric heat pump water heaters, save Americans billions of dollars and vastly reduce carbon emissions. If finalized, the proposed standards would force less energy efficient, but cheaper, water heaters off the market.

"Today’s actions — together with our industry partners and stakeholders — Improve outdated efficiency standards for common household appliances, which is essential to slashing utility bills for American families and cutting harmful carbon emissions," Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said in a statement.

"This proposal reinforces the trajectory of consumer savings that forms the key pillar of Bidenomics and builds on the unprecedented actions already taken by this Administration to lower energy costs for working families across the nation," she continued.

BIDEN ADMIN MOVING FORWARD WITH LIGHT BULB BANS IN COMING WEEKS

Overall, the DOE projected the regulations, which are slated to go into effect in 2029, would save Americans about $198 billion while curbing emissions by 501 million metric tons over the next three decades. That's roughly the same carbon footprint as 63 million homes or half of all homes nationwide.

Under the rule, the federal government would require higher efficiency for heaters using heat pump technology or, in the case of gas-fired water heaters, to achieve efficiency gains through condensing technology. Non-condensing gas-fired water heaters, though, are far cheaper and smaller, meaning they come with lower installation costs.

According to the DOE, water heating accounts for 13% of annual residential energy use and consumer utility costs. 

BIDEN ADMIN'S WAR ON HOUSEHOLD APPLIANCES WILL CAUSE HIGHER PRICES, DIRTIER CLOTHES AND DISHES, EXPERTS WARN

In addition to water heaters, over the last several months, the DOE has unveiled new standards for a wide variety of other appliances including gas stoves, clothes washers, refrigerators and air conditioners. The agency's comment period on a separate dishwasher regulatory proposal concluded Tuesday.

According to the current federal Unified Agenda, a government-wide, semiannual list that highlights regulations agencies plan to propose or finalize within the next 12 months, the Biden administration is additionally moving forward with rules impacting dozens more appliances, including consumer furnaces, pool pumps, battery chargers, ceiling fans and dehumidifiers.

The Biden administration boasted in December that it had taken 110 actions on energy efficiency rules in 2022 alone as part of its climate agenda.

The DOE said Friday that, altogether, its appliance regulations will save Americans $570 billion and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by more than 2.4 billion metric tons over the next 30 years.

However, consumer groups and experts have criticized the administration over its aggressive energy efficiency campaign. They have argued the new regulations will reduce consumer choice and increase costs for Americans.

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"It's just spreading to more and more appliances. It seems that almost everything that plugs in or fires up around the house is either subject to a pending regulation or soon will be," Ben Lieberman, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, previously told Fox News Digital.

"Consumers aren't going to like any of it," he added. "These rules are almost always bad for consumers for the simple reason that they restrict consumer choice." 

For lovers of salacious political gossip that may or may not be true, January 5, 2018 was a banner day. President Trump’s legal team had threatened to sue if Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury wasn’t kept off the shelves; instead publisher Henry Holt & Co. released the White House tell-all early because of “unprecedented demand.” Within a week it was the fastest-selling book in the publisher’s history and I was relishing every second of the audiobook. Trump didn’t even want to be president! His attorney “took care of” as many as 100 potential sex scandals during the campaign! Steve Bannon predicted that Robert Mueller’s team was “going to crack Don Junior like an egg on national TV!”

Since Trump left office, there has been a deluge of books about the inner workings of the previous administration from journalists on the Trump beat and former White House insiders with scores to settle and reputations they’d like to rehabilitate; Axios reported that Trump himself has given “at least 22 interviews for 17 different books since leaving office.” While there’s been limited interest in tell-alls by former Trump aides, a few books by journalists have become bestsellers. But personally, I am now too cynical to devote even eight hours to “ear reading” a book whose basic take away is “Trump: not a great guy.” Therefore, please join me on this tour of the juiciest tidbits from the latest batch of Trump books. I do not know if they are true, but I do know they are darkly amusing and might even be shocking if we weren’t all numb.

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Source: I’ll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw at the Trump White House by Stephanie Grisham

The report: Stephanie Grisham, the former Trump White House press secretary (whom you probably don’t remember because she never held a press briefing) and chief of staff to Melania Trump, claims in her book that Trump was cutting his own infamous locks even before the pandemic made amateur barbering a trend. According to the Washington Post, Grisham writes that Trump would cut his hair using “a huge pair of scissors that could probably cut a ribbon at an opening of one of his properties.”

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Source: I’ll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw at the Trump White House by Stephanie Grisham

The report: When the going got tough, our “tough guy” president had a guy come play his favorite show tunes, according to Grisham. The New York Times reports:

At one point, she writes, Mr. Trump’s handlers designated an unnamed White House official known as the “Music Man” to play him his favorite show tunes, including “Memory” from “Cats,” to pull him from the brink of rage. (The aide, it is revealed later, is Ms. Grisham’s ex-boyfriend. She does not identify him, but it is Max Miller, a former White House official now running for Congress with Mr. Trump’s support.)

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Source: I’ll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw at the Trump White House by Stephanie Grisham

Report: When Melania Trump returned to the White House after donning a jacket reading “I Really Don’t Care Do U?” during a trip to visit child migrants, she was summoned to the Oval Office – which was a first. President Trump then yelled at Grisham and his wife, asking, “What the hell were you thinking?”

If you too would like the answer to this question, you’re out of luck. Melania’s reasons for ordering a $39 jacket online from Zara, then wearing it to the border, are still a mystery. According to the Times, Grisham only reveals that Trump himself came up with the cover story, telling an aide to tweet out that his wife’s target was the Fake News Media, not migrant children separated from their parents.

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Source: I’ll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw at the Trump White House by Stephanie Grisham

Report: In a book excerpt published in Politico, Grisham said the first lady picked up on a mean nickname for her step-daughter and her husband:

When I worked for the first lady in the East Wing, we had all come to call Jared and Ivanka “the interns” because they represented in our minds obnoxious, entitled know-it-alls. Mrs. Trump found that nickname amusing and occasionally used it herself. 

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Source: Blowback: A Warning to Save Democracy from the Next Trump by Miles Taylor

Report: In his forthcoming book, the “resistance inside the Trump administration” guy claims that the former president made misogynistic comments about Kirstjen Nielsen, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Kellyanne Conway, and various other women serving under him in the White House. And his comments about his own daughter were particularly gross. Per Newsweek:

“Aides said he talked about Ivanka Trump’s breasts, her backside, and what it might be like to have sex with her, remarks that once led John Kelly to remind the president that Ivanka was his daughter,” Taylor writes.

“Afterward, Kelly retold that story to me in visible disgust. Trump, he said, was ‘a very, very evil man.’”

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Source: Never give an Inch: Fighting for the America I Love by Mike Pompeo

The report: In his memoir Mike Pompeo, the former secretary of state, accuses Nikki Haley, the former ambassador to the United Nations, of trying to convince Trump to boot Pence from the 2020 ticket so she could be his running mate. The Guardian reports:

Describing his own anger when Haley secured a personal Oval Office meeting with Trump without checking with him, Pompeo writes that Haley in fact “played” Trump’s then chief of staff, John Kelly, and instead of meeting the president alone, was accompanied by Trump’s daughter and her husband, both senior advisers.

“As best Kelly could tell,” Pompeo writes, “they were presenting a possible ‘Haley for vice-president’ option. I can’t confirm this, but [Kelly] was certain he had been played, and he was not happy about it. Clearly, this visit did not reflect a team effort but undermined our work for America.”

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Source: Blowback: A Warning to Save Democracy from the Next Trump by Miles Taylor

Report: In the aftermath of the Parkland school shooting the Trump administration had several executive agencies work together to produce “a series of recommendations on how to make U.S. classrooms safer and prevent shooting tragedies,” according to Taylor. But Trump wanted the National Rifle Association, which gave more than $30 million to his 2016 campaign, to have final say on its conclusions. Taylor writes, per Vanity Fair:

Trump’s staff demanded that the NRA review the draft report before it was issued. What’s more, White House staff told [Education Department chief of staff Josh] Venable that they didn’t want the report to mention “firearms” at all. He thought this was an absurdity. The whole purpose of the commission was to look at classroom safety in the wake of a mass shooting. It would be like writing a report about flood protection without mentioning rain or hurricanes.

Venable ultimately quit before the report was completed, and the final NRA-approved version was watered down and meaningless.

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Source: Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost by Michael C. Bender

The report: In this too-on-the-nose anecdote, during a trip to Europe Trump remarked to John Kelly, “Well, Hitler did a lot of good things.”

According to an anonymous source who wants us to know about Kelly’s behind-the-scenes heroism, the former chief of staff tried to school his boss on Nazi atrocities, then settled for ensuring he wouldn’t repeat this in public. From The Guardian:

But Bender says unnamed sources reported that Kelly “told the president that he was wrong, but Trump was undeterred,” emphasizing German economic recovery under Hitler during the 1930s.

“Kelly pushed back again,” Bender writes, “and argued that the German people would have been better off poor than subjected to the Nazi genocide.”

Bender adds that Kelly told Trump that even if his claim about the German economy under the Nazis after 1933 were true, “you cannot ever say anything supportive of Adolf Hitler. You just can’t.”

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Source: I’ll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw at the Trump White House by Stephanie Grisham

Report: Do you believe that Trump would endure significant physical discomfort just to maintain his strongman persona? That is the central question raised by Grisham’s explanation for Trump’s impromptu trip to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in 2019, which prompted much wild speculation. Though she does not actually use the word “colonoscopy,” according to the Post, Grisham writes that it was “a very common procedure” for which “a patient is sometimes put under” and that George W. Bush had one as president, too.

Grisham explains that Trump refused to disclose this to the media, though it could have encouraged Americans to undergo regular cancer screenings, because he didn’t want to be “the butt of a joke” on late-night TV. According to the New York Times, Grisham says Trump also underwent the procedure without anesthesia because he felt giving Vice President Mike Pence power even for a few hours would be “showing weakness.”

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Source: I’ll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw at the Trump White House by Stephanie Grisham

Report: During a meeting on the sidelines of the 2019 G20 summit, Trump warned Russian leader Vladimir Putin that he was going get tough with him – but it was just for show. Grisham writes, per the Times:

With all the talk of sanctions against Russia for interfering in the 2016 election and for various human rights abuses, Trump told Putin, “Okay, I’m going to act a little tougher with you for a few minutes. But it’s for the cameras, and after they leave we’ll talk. You understand.”

As Intelligencer’s Benjamin Hart notes, “One can only imagine what Trump was like with Putin in private.”

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Source: Peril by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa

Report: A consistent theme throughout this entire genre is that everyone around Trump thinks he’s dangerously stupid, but mainly all they do about it is make fun of him behind his back. As New York contributor Ben Jacobs noted, the book reports that Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, “thought that the president was experiencing mental decline” and “Attorney General William Barr compared him to a deranged character from Dr. Strangelove.” Mitch McConnell is quoted as joking in the Senate cloakroom: “Do you know why [former secretary of State Rex] Tillerson was able to say he didn’t call the president a ‘moron’? Because he called him a ‘fucking moron’.” Solid.

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Source: Nightmare Scenario: Inside the Trump Administration’s Response to the Pandemic That Changed History by Yasmeen Abutaleb and Damian Paletta

Report: When it comes to moronic ideas for containing a pandemic, you’re never going to beat hmm … has anyone tried injecting bleach? But there were a lot of runners up. Abutaleb and Paletta report that in the early days of the pandemic, Trump offered a suggestion on how to handle Americans who had been diagnosed with COVID-19 abroad. “Don’t we have an island that we own?” he reportedly asked advisers assembled in the Situation Room. “What about Guantánamo?”

Aides were stunned, according to the Washington Post, and when Trump brought it up again the idea was quickly scuttled, as they thinking that “quarantining American tourists on the same Caribbean base where the United States holds terrorism suspects” might cause some kind of backlash.

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Source: Nightmare Scenario: Inside the Trump Administration’s Response to the Pandemic That Changed History by Yasmeen Abutaleb and Damian Paletta

Report: Another recurring theme in these books: Trump bemoans the idiocy within his administration, only to learn the calls are coming from inside his own house(s).

For instance, while berating berated Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar in a March 18 phone call, Trump reportedly declared “Testing is killing me!” and demanded to know why the federal government got involved in COVID-19 testing in the first place.

“I’m going to lose the election because of testing! What idiot had the federal government do testing?” Trump said.

“Uh, do you mean Jared?” Azar responded.

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Source: Here’s the Deal: A Memoir by Kellyanne Conway

Report: Conway, who served as senior counselor to the president throughout Trump’s presidency, criticized her husband George Conway in her book, saying his frequent public missives attacking Trump amounted to “cheating by tweeting.” She also revealed that she got some support from Ivanka Trump, who knows about politics dividing families. Here’s the relevant excerpt, per People:

Ivanka offered empathy and an ear.

“I am in a family of Democrats,” she said, referring to at least some of the Kushners. “I get it.” I got somewhat emotional, not overly personal, and was truly grateful. In that moment, Ivanka was incredibly kind and supportive, reiterating that she knew how warmly her father and their entire family felt about me.

A week after that conversation, and based on my stated openness to the idea, Ivanka came into my office (which was next to hers) and handed me a Post-it note. It had the names of two local doctors who specialized in couples therapy. I noticed she had avoided putting that in a text or an email. I appreciated the information and her thoughtfulness and wanted to pursue it. After I showed George the names, he rejected one and said a half-hearted “okay” to the other while looking at his phone.

We never went.

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Source: Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost by Michael C. Bender

Report: In a scene reminiscent of Star Trek: The Next Generation’s famous “shut up, Wesley” scene (if Wesley was the opposite of a boy genius and seemed pretty racist) Joint Chiefs Chairman General Mark Milley reportedly snapped at Stephen Miller in 2020 when the Trump adviser compared the unfolding racial-justice protests to something out of a third-world country and suggested that Black Lives Matter demonstrators had turned U.S. cities into war zones. Per CNN:

“These cities are burning,” Miller warned, according to the excerpts.

The comment infuriated Milley, who viewed Miller as not only wrong but out of his lane, Bender writes, noting the Army general who had commanded troops in Iraq and Afghanistan spun around in his seat and pointed a finger directly at Miller.

“Shut the f- - - up, Stephen,” Milley snapped, according to the excerpts.

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Source: Blowback: A Warning to Save Democracy from the Next Trump by Miles Taylor

Report: Trump aide Stephen Miller offered a horrifying yet unsurprising suggestion to Paul Zukunft, who was then commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard: use Predator drones to “obliterate” a boat of migrants headed to the U.S. Rolling Stone reports:

In a passage reviewed by Rolling Stone, former Trump Department of Homeland Security appointee Miles Taylor writes about an April 2018 conversation in which Miller allegedly advocated an attack on a migrant ship headed for the United States. Miller, Taylor writes, argued for the potential mass killing of civilians by suggesting they were not protected under the U.S. Constitution because they were in international waters.

While Taylor describes the exchange in detail, Zukunft said he has “no recollection” of the conversation and Miller called it “a complete fiction.”

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Source: Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost by Michael C. Bender and A Scared Oath: Memoirs of a Secretary of Defense During Extraordinary Times by Mark Esper.

Report: For your mental file of unsurprising yet still appalling Trump behavior: During the same discussions about racial justice protests, Trump reportedly pointed to footage of law enforcement getting physical with demonstrators and said that’s what he wanted to see. Per CNN:

“That’s how you’re supposed to handle these people,” Trump told his top law enforcement and military officials, according to Bender. “Crack their skulls!”

Trump also told his team that he wanted the military to go in and “beat the f- - - out” of the civil rights protesters, Bender writes.

“Just shoot them,” Trump said on multiple occasions inside the Oval Office, according to the excerpts.

When Milley and Barr suggested the president should tone down the bloodlust he replied, “Well, shoot them in the leg — or maybe the foot … but be hard on them!”

In his own memoir, Mark Esper, the former defense secretary, also recalls Trump asking him about the protesters, “Can’t you just shoot them?”

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Source: A Scared Oath: Memoirs of a Secretary of Defense During Extraordinary Times by Mark Esper.

Report: Spoiler alert: Breaking Bad does not end with U.S. military secretly blowing up a Mexican drug lab, killing Walter White and his associates. But that could have happened in real life, if Trump had his way. Mark Esper says in his memoir that during the summer of 2020, Trump asked him if the U.S. military could stop the flow of drugs across the southern border by launching missiles into Mexico, then lying about it. Per the New York Times:

Mr. Trump asked Mr. Esper at least twice if the military could “shoot missiles into Mexico to destroy the drug labs.”

“They don’t have control of their own country,” Mr. Esper recounts Mr. Trump saying.

When Mr. Esper raised various objections, Mr. Trump said that “we could just shoot some Patriot missiles and take out the labs, quietly,” adding that “no one would know it was us.” Mr. Trump said he would just say that the United States had not conducted the strike, Mr. Esper recounts, writing that he would have thought it was a joke had he not been staring Mr. Trump in the face.

So Trump’s theory was basically Nobody’s gonna know … How would they know? Sounds like he’s is a TikTok fan after all.

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Source: Donald Trump v. the United States by Michael Schmidt

Report: Trump loved the “attack, and say we didn’t” strategy so much that he suggested we use it on North Korea, too. Per NBC News:

“What scared [John] Kelly even more than [Trump’s North Korea] tweets was the fact that behind closed doors in the Oval Office, Trump continued to talk as if he wanted to go to war. He cavalierly discussed the idea of using a nuclear weapon against North Korea, saying that if he took such an action, the administration could blame someone else for it to absolve itself of responsibility,” according to the new section of the book.

Kelly tried to use reason to explain to Trump why that would not work, Schmidt continues. 

“It’d be tough to not have the finger pointed at us,” Kelly told the president, according to the afterword.

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Source: Blowback: A Warning to Save Democracy from the Next Trump by Miles Taylor

Report: Taylor, the “anonymous resistance inside the Trump administration” guy, claims that Homeland Security officials were so thinking about Trump’s cavalier attitude toward North Korea that they had several meetings to prepare for a nuclear attack on the U.S. Taylor writes that Trump “almost seemed to welcome a nuclear conflict, which terrified us.” Per Politico:

Taylor said then-Defense Secretary James Mattis cornered him one day after a Situation Room meeting.

“‘You all need to prepare like we’re going to war,’ he warned. Mattis was serious. DHS should assume the homeland was in mortal danger.” …

“We convened every top leader in DHS to discuss the brewing crisis,” he writes in the new book, which is set for release on July 18. “Experts walked through various scenarios of a nuclear strike on the U.S. homeland, dusted off response plans, and outlined best-case scenarios which nevertheless sounded horrifically grim. I cannot provide the details, but I walked out of those meetings genuinely thinking about the safety of the country. In my view, the department was unprepared for the type of nuclear conflict Trump might foment.”

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Source: Blowback: A Warning to Save Democracy from the Next Trump by Miles Taylor

Report: Shortly before Trump delivered his State of the Union address in February 2019, Taylor, who was chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security, learned that Trump wanted to deploy U.S. troops to “forcibly expel” migrants from a caravan heading for the southern border. Per Politico:

“This is fucking insane,” Trump told them of the migrants during a conversation in the White House’s Map Room. “We can’t let them in.”

The president gave Nielsen and Taylor permission to close U.S. ports and “send them back.” Then, “he told us to use the military, which I interpreted as a nod to the Insurrection Act that aides had warned me about,” Taylor writes.

Taylor and Nielsen eventually told Trump that they were working with Mexican authorities to handle the situation, so he did not wind up making this unprecedented move.

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Source: Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost by Michael C. Bender

Report: During the racial-justice protests in June 2020, President Trump was briefly taken into a bunker under the White House. Days later, he fumed to assembled military, law enforcement, and West Wing officials about this fact being leaked to the press.

“‘Whoever did that, they should be charged with treason!’ Trump yelled, according to Bender. ‘They should be executed!’”

It appears that all of the Trump administration leakers lived to share dirt for the new batch of Trump books.

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Source: Landslide: The Final Days of the Trump Presidency by Michael Wolff

Report: As the pandemic took hold the spring of 2020, Trump thought Democrats were trying to weaken their own presidential nominee, Joe Biden, so they could replace him with Andrew Cuomo, who was successfully painting himself as “America’s governor” at the time. Per Spectrum News 1:

Trump’s source, according to journalist Michael Wolff’s forthcoming book Landslide, was Fox News personality Sean Hannity.

According to a portion of the book obtained by Spectrum News 1, Trump met with Republican strategist Karl Rove in the Oval Office to discuss the theory of a Cuomo-led Democratic ticket. Trump believed the plan was being orchestrated by former President Barack Obama, and even suggested one possibility was to have Michelle Obama run on the ticket with Cuomo.

Rove, according to the book, found the claim to be a “bizarre theory.”

Trump is not only the president for people who believe Hannity’s conspiracy theories, he’s also a client.

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Souce: Landslide: The Final Days of the Trump Presidency by Michael Wolff

Report: In the summer of 2020, Trump reportedly raised the idea of delaying the election or “calling it off” due to the pandemic, Wolff reports. Chief of Staff Mark Meadows told him the Constitution would not allow this, but Trump wasn’t convinced, so he asked Chris Christie about it during debate prep. From Business Insider:

“I’m thinking about calling it off,” Trump told Christie, the book says.

“The prep?” Christie reportedly said.

“No, the election — too much virus,” Trump was said to have replied. According to Wolff, Christie then told him, “You can’t do that, man,” adding: “You do know, you can’t declare martial law. You do know that, right?”

This isn’t a huge shock as Trump also floated this idea in a July 30 tweet bashing mail voting, which concluded, “Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???” Trump received widespread criticism, though his use of three question marks clearly indicates he was only thinking about suspending the Constitution.

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Source: Thank You For Your Servitude by Mark Leibovich.

Report: Donald Trump and Chris Christie were both hospitalized for COVID, which they apparently contracted at the White House’s super-spreader reception for Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett in September 2020. Trump gave Christie a call when he was in the ICU, but it seems the former New Jersey governor’s health wasn’t his primary concern. Per Politico:

“Trump was being treated concurrently at Walter Reed hospital and called Christie in New Jersey to check in, caring friend that he was. After some chitchat, Trump moved to the real purpose of his call. ‘Are you going to say you got this from me?’ Trump asked Christie. It was important that he not say this, the president reminded him. Contagion, pathogens, ICU—not beautiful associations for the brand.

“‘It was one of the few laughs I had in the hospital,’ Christie told me later of Trump’s friendly reminder. ‘I got off the phone and I just shook my head. Like, this guy will never change.’”

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Source: Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost by Michael C. Bender

Report: Despite receiving a slap on the wrist from Fox News for appearing in a Trump campaign spot in 2016, Sean Hannity helped write a Trump campaign ad in the 2020 election. Trump campaign officials found the ad (which described Biden as a “47-year swamp creature”) so terrible that they only ran it during Hannity.