Read Online REVIEW OF RAGE: Bob Woodward’s Trump exposé DOC
They spoke 18 times. Eighteen! Do you think Trump has spoken to his Energy secretary 18 times? Do you even know who his Energy secretary is? I can tell you this much; he is not Bob Woodward, the man on the other end of the line for all those conversations, some of them on tape, many conducted in the midst of a pandemic.These interviews form the spine of “Rage,” Woodward’s second book about the Trump administration. His first was called “Fear.” If you happen to have forgotten about “Fear,” Woodward offers a reminder on Page 8 of “Rage,” quoting from the earlier volume’s description of Trump as “mercurial” and “unpredictable.” Both words mean the same thing, but let’s leave that aside for now.Then Woodward quotes himself again, from a television appearance made while promoting “Fear”: “Let’s hope to God we don’t have a crisis.”We’ve now got enough crises to keep Beltway authors busy for a generation, though most of them will not be lucky enough to speak to the president 18 times, because they are not Bob Woodward, who — with his Washington Post colleague Carl Bernstein — helped pave the way for Richard Nixon’s downfall. He has shared in two Pulitzers and written 21 books, virtually all of them about how power courses through Washington’s veins. Woodward is the town cardiologist, or at least carries himself as such.So what profound insight did those conversations yield? With a title like “Rage,” you imagine King Lear-like diatribes against the Dems, or some Trumpian version of Nixon talking to the portraits, third martini spilling on the West Wing carpet. And you imagine the stenographer of that rage rendering it with a clarifying fury of his own.Read more...
