Fear: Trump in the White House

 

Fear: Trump in the White House by Bob Woodward

This was Bob Woodward’s first of two books that he wrote about the Trump presidency.  I read the second one (“Rage”) first, and there’s one key difference between the two.  In the second book, Trump allowed himself to be extensively interviewed by Woodward.  This is highly apparent since Woodward essentially recounts many of those interviews verbatim in that book.   The disadvantage is that such accounts don’t make the book as interesting.  The big advantage, however, is it truly shows just how deranged the 45^th president was (and still is).  In other words, Bob Woodward didn’t really have to add any of his reflections and thoughts for the second book; he just let the madman ramble.

For this book, for whatever reason, Trump was never interviewed.  However, the overall flow of this narrative is essentially the same. Donald Trump was completely clueless when it came to knowing how to run the country, and his advisors and cabinet essentially had to run around behind his back, covering up his mistakes, and doing all they could to ensure that this president didn’t (literally) blow up the country. 

I guess it’s easy to see how someone like Trump could have such a massive ego and never admit that he’s ever been wrong about anything.  Being a highly successful businessman will do that to you.  What’s so sad, and frustrating, is that Trump is completely clueless in that he thinks he can dictate over the free world as if he were trying to conduct a mammoth real estate deal.  Yes, it’s much easier to be a ruthless bully at the negotiating table when it comes to building casinos, but this sad character could never get it through his thick skull that you can’t apply this same methodology when dealing with foreign countries and even cabinet members and the representatives on Capitol Hill.  No one on his cabinet is spared his scorn.  I mean, how can you respect a president who calls his attorney general a “mentally retarded ignorant southerner” behind his back?

Like many of Bob Woodward’s books, there really isn’t an overall theme to this book.  We begin the book on the campaign trail during the 2016 race, and it abruptly ends about half-way through his presidency.  Why does Woodward stop there?  Does he think he already has enough material for a complete book? Is he eager to publish this halfway through the presidency so people can see just how malodorous the man is?  I would guess “yes” to both of those questions.  So there is nothing here about his inept handling of the COVID crisis, nor do we read about his idiocy when he pouts that the 2020 election was “stolen” and tries to instigate an insurrection with many of his devout supporters who, somehow, are actually dumber than he is.  The former incident is in Woodward’s second book, the latter will be in many other books to come I’m sure.  So we do feel a bit jarred when this book ends where it does, but Woodward gets his overall point across just fine.

This book serves in many ways as a Cliff’s Notes of many of the initiatives and goals of Trump’s first two years.  We read about many of the ridiculous things that he wants to accomplish that make absolutely no sense, and how his cabinet members try to rationalize with their clueless leader how his ideas simply won’t work, and if they actually try to put his initiatives into place, he’ll essentially destroy the country; either financially or via nuclear bomb from one of our potentially aggravated enemies.  In fact, much of this book focuses on his cabinet and advisors going behind his back and either ignoring or rescinding his orders.  Fortunately, they deduce, Trump won’t even figure out what they’re doing.  Trump’s brain is so scattered and unfocused that he can’t even remember what he ordered his team to do by the time the sun sets.  This allows his advisors to (literally) sneak initiatives off his desk that he wants to push. If he stops thinking about it after a little while, he’ll forget about it completely.  They’re right.  It’s quite scary, but one feels magnificently comforted that at least his cabinet members had the sense to quietly remedy much of the damage Trump would do, or try to do.

Most of this book, like all of Woodward’s accounts, is very left-brained.  This book is not a hodge podge of celebrity gossip that focuses on the sleazier aspects of the man, his history, or his private life.  It’s mostly about the inner workings and policy initiatives. This is not a boring book, though.   Woodward does an excellent job bringing his reader along to understand many of the lesser-known aspects of a president’s administration.  I imagine that most common constituents don’t really know much about Trump’s proposed steel tariff initiatives or the KORUS trade agreement that he was always trying to dismantle.

There’s quite a lot here on the Mueller investigation of the Russian election meddling as well, and this was the one area that I thought was a bit too much in the weeds. We read of lengthy meetings between attorneys on both sides of the fence haggling back and forth, and it tends to take away from the overall enjoyment of the book.  In fact, this is really where the book “ends”.  This was kind of a downer since the book ended on a somewhat negative note in terms of interest.  One wishes that the author would have perhaps given an overall summary of his findings of Trump and his presidency at the conclusion of the narrative.  Perhaps the author thought that would have been inappropriate since it had only been two years in the presidency.

That leads me to another conclusion I came to, and that is I don’t really think Woodward intended this to be a hatchet job.  I don’t think he set out to tear the man down with this narrative.  Like many, I’m sure he was incredibly surprised that Trump won the election, but one gets the feeling that, like many others, he was hoping he would be pleasantly surprised shocked with the man.  Sadly, though, we read that this never happened.  I didn’t feel Woodward was attacking the man with his journalistic pen.  I felt he was just calling it as it was.  And it “was” incredibly sad.

I would also conclude that the word in the book’s title “Fear” is really indictive of how those in the cabinet felt trying to appease their lunatic of a boss. Those closest to the inner workings of the government at the time were truly petrified about what could happen had Trump gotten his way in many cases.  We can truly thank God that this didn’t happen, and that said cabinet members actually did keep the country functioning during this four years of insanity; regardless of the fact that their boss never gave a rip about their feelings nor accomplishments. This was demonstrated during his frequent reckless Twitter outbursts. These idiotic rantings would almost require a book of its own.

Thank God he’s gone.  Let’s pray he never comes back.