‘Bill Pulte got really scared.’

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President Donald Trump’s Thursday night speech was far tamer than some of his closest aides feared. Acting Director of National Intelligence Bill Pulte, a favorite of the president’s, had in the days leading up the speech pushed to reveal the names of intelligence officials accused of concealing election interference from Trump, according to two senior officials granted anonymity to discuss private conversations.

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That set off a scramble inside the White House with senior officials, including chief of staff Susie Wiles, fearing that it could undermine the president’s broader point about election vulnerabilities and put intelligence analysts’ lives at risk, the two officials said. They argued to Pulte that naming individuals involved in an alleged cover up of election fraud could lead to conspiracy theorists to take the law into their own hands. Pulte, who flew to New York with Trump on Friday, did not respond to a request for comment but the two officials said he backed down. “Pulte got really scared by the whole thing and pulled back,” said one of the two senior officials. “He got POTUS all spun up and then was incredibly scared when he realized people could die with his reckless behavior.” Simultaneously, several Trump officials urged the president to remain restrained and on script, a notoriously difficult task for the president, whose aides often learn what the president is going to say as he says it. “They explained the way to be taken seriously is not to be crazy,” the senior official told POLITICO.

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