| RAGE Bob Woodward New York: Simon & Schuster, September 2020 |
Rating: 5.0 High |
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| ISBN-13 978-1-9821-3173-9 | ||||
| ISBN 1-9821-3173-X | 452pp. | HC/BWI | $30.00 | |
Following up on his 2018 book Fear: Trump in the White House, Bob Woodward covers the Trump administration during the first seven months of 2020. In this coverage he was aided, unaccountably, by gaining permission for on-the-record interviews with Trump himself — a series of interviews which spanned nearly the entire period and added up to 21 hours of conversation. The majority of these were tape-recorded by the author with Trump's permission. Woodward also obtained hundreds of interviews with other White House principals and access to 25 letters exchanged between Trump and Kim Jong Un, leader of North Korea.
In this book, Bob Woodward presents Trump's conversations in a more coherent way than he did in Fear: He'll often give several back-and-forth exchanges between himself and Trump. In cases where Trump is wrong, he gives the relevant quotation in one paragraph and in the next shows why it is wrong. The net result is that Trump comes off better than he did in Fear. But he still comes across as more of a liability than an asset.
An example is Woodward's discussion of George Floyd's killing and whether Trump had watched the video of it.1
"Sure I got to watch it. Everybody did. All you need was a television. I watched it numerous times. I mean, mostly I was in the White House, upstairs, because I don't get to watch much television during the day. I mean, upstairs. And I watched it. It's been on, it's been on a lot. No, it's a terrible thing, and strong feeling toward it. I don't like it at all. I'm very unhappy about it. And action has been taken and it will be taken, and it will be dealt with. And I think the riots are—I put it out in Minneapolis. That was the worst one of all. They were ripping down the city. They're all liberal Democrats, every one of them is a liberal Democrat. Hard to believe, right?" "How did you decide, okay, I'm going to give that law-and-order speech?" "It was very easy for me to decide," he said. "Because I looked and there was no law and order. And the radical left Dems and the Democrat—they're all Democrat mayors or governors. I mean, every one of them. Every one of them. Every one where there's weakness is that. So that was an easy speech for me to write. Usually I write them and/or substantially adjust them." "Did somebody help you?" "Yeah, I get people. They come up with ideas. But the ideas are mine, Bob. The ideas are mine. Want to know something? Everything's mine. You know, everything is mine." I asked about his walk to St. John's and the treatment of the protesters there. "It's total bullshit," he said. "They didn't use tear gas." Firsthand witnesses, including reporters, and videos showed law enforcement officers using pepper spray, smoke canisters and pepper balls to disperse the crowd. – Page 341 |
A large part of the book deals with Trump's response to the pandemic and his interactions with medical experts including Drs Fauci and Birx, and senior staff like Matt Pottinger.2 Other important matters including talks with North Korea, Kushner's plan for Middle East peace, military options in Iraq and Iran, and the trade war with China are also covered.
Rage proceeds chronologically and provides significant insights into Trump's decisions and actions during the final year of his term. Given that so many other books probe Trump's thinking and his conduct of the administration, I can't call this one a must-read. But it is a coherent and well-written account, accurate and fair-minded. It is easy to read and has very few grammatical errors. I give it full marks.
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