Bob Woodward's New Trump Book Sounds Both Damning and Frightening

Fire and Fury, the New York Times bestseller chronicling the first year of the Trump White House, provided a shockingly intimate look into the machinations of a chaotic presidential administration. Its allegations were detailed and damming, but its author, Michael Wolff, carried an unsavory reputation as a journalist known to bend the rules of conventional reporting. The book’s veracity was called into question by the White House, Trump and critics on both the left and right. The same will not be said for Fear, the forthcoming book from Bob Woodward that offers a similarly nuanced glimpse of the terrifying culture surrounding a breathtakingly incompetent president. While Wolff was known to skirt protocol, Woodward — known primarily for his role exposing the Watergate scandal that led to Richard Nixon’s resignation — is one of the most revered and well-respected journalists in American history. Though Fear won’t be released until September 11th, the Washington Post, where Woodward serves as an associate editor, picked up an advance copy. On Tuesday, the paper published a delicious preview of what to expect.

According to the Post, the book, which was based on hundreds of hours of interviews conducted on deep background, meaning the sources were not revealed, depicts an administration rife with “anger and paranoia.” Trump is portrayed as someone with little knowledge of how government functions and, tragically, little desire to learn. He is deeply embarrassed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, routinely critical of the administration officials he hired and totally unequipped to lead the world’s most powerful nation. Those around him work tirelessly to protect Trump from himself, employing “stealthy machinations” in an effort to “control his impulses and prevent disasters, both for the president personally and for the nation he was elected to lead.”

Woodward reportedly writes of how after Trump learned in April 2017 that Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad attacked his own people with chemical weapons, the president instructed Defense Secretary James Mattis to “fucking kill him” and to go in and “kill the fucking lot of them.” Mattis agreed before telling an aide to come up with a more “measured” response. Former economic adviser Gary Cohn would reportedly remove papers from Trump’s desk to prevent them from being signed. Cohn ultimately resigned, as would John Dowd, the president’s former legal counsel who allegedly attempted to convince Trump that he would end up in an “orange jumpsuit” should he agree to an interview with Mueller’s team. As former staff secretary Rob Porter told Woodward, “This was no longer a presidency. This is no longer a White House. This is a man being who he is.”

The book also appears to be packed with accounts of Trump airing grievances against his staffers and Cabinet members. Here are some (reported) words and anecdotes from the president, as gleaned from the Post.

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https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/woodward-trump-book-718787/