Fear: Trump in the White House
OVER 2 MILLION COPIES SOLD RUNAWAY #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER SENSATIONAL #1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER "Explosive."--The Washington Post "Devastating."--The New Yorker "Unprecedented."--CNN "Great reporting...astute."--Hugh Hewitt THE INSIDE STORY ON PRESIDENT TRUMP, AS ONLY BOB WOODWARD CAN TELL IT With authoritative reporting honed through nine presidencies, author Bob Woodward reveals in unprecedented detail the harrowing life inside President Donald Trump's White House and precisely how he makes decisions on major foreign and domestic policies. Fear is the most intimate portrait of a sitting president ever published during the president's first years in office. The focus is on the explosive debates and the decision-making in the Oval Office, the Situation Room, Air Force One and the White House residence. Woodward draws from hundreds of hours of interviews with firsthand sources, meeting notes, personal diaries, files and documents. Often with day-by-day details, dialogue and documentation, Fear tracks key foreign issues from North Korea, Afghanistan, Iran, the Middle East, NATO, China and Russia. It reports in-depth on Trump's key domestic issues particularly trade and tariff disputes, immigration, tax legislation, the Paris Climate Accord and the racial violence in Charlottesville in 2017. Fear presents vivid details of the negotiations between Trump's attorneys and Robert Mueller, the special counsel in the Russia investigation, laying out for the first time the meeting-by-meeting discussions and strategies. It discloses how senior Trump White House officials joined together to steal draft orders from the president's Oval Office desk so he would not issue directives that would jeopardize top secret intelligence operations. "It was no less than an administrative coup d'état," Woodward writes, "a nervous breakdown of the executive power of the most powerful country in the world."
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Community Reviews
I feel like this book got worse as it went on. This would be a great book if someone took a firm editing-and-reorganizing hand. I feel like Woodward was treating me like I am Trump. He mentioned all the topics in not-so-short summary, in case I couldn't or wouldn't finish the book? And then he started repeating and repeating topics and even specific quotes, driving me to distraction. It was almost like the reality TV format of repeating clips that makes me not watch reality TV.
That said, here is what I found interesting about it. This is a very even-handed view of Trump. It was, dare I say, sympathetic towards him and the people around him. The people who speak most harshly about Trump in this account are Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly.
The most interesting parts for me were the in-depth discussions of:
1) the existential threats of North Korea's nuclear capabilities,
2) the threat Russia's defense of the Baltics,
3) the neverending Afghanistan quagmire,
4) the not always unfavorable comparisons to President Obama,
5) private discussions of Senator Lindsay Graham and President Trump,
6) disagreement among Executive staff regarding free trade,
7) discussions with Trump leading up to the tax cuts, and
8) Trump's total inability to speak under oath without perjuring himself.
4 stars for substance, 3 stars for writing execution.
Update: I’m reading Good and Mad by Rebecca Traister right now, and she doesn’t at all mention this book or Bob Woodward, but she does discuss white men in media, and I started thinking what an injustice this book is. Trump has been a racist, sexist monster and I’m still so angry that he suggested “the second amendment people” murder Hillary. Not to mention all the lives he’s callously destroyed while in office. Don’t tell me he doesn’t understand putting kids in detention camps. What he doesn’t understand is human decency or democracy. He doesn't deserve to be in the same room as, much less the same office as, former President Barack Obama. Trump does not deserve our sympathy just because he cried over one Syrian baby. Maybe Woodward only thinks Trump deserves our sympathy because he is in such a position of privilege that his life has not been materially affected by this atrocity yet.
That said, here is what I found interesting about it. This is a very even-handed view of Trump. It was, dare I say, sympathetic towards him and the people around him. The people who speak most harshly about Trump in this account are Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly.
The most interesting parts for me were the in-depth discussions of:
1) the existential threats of North Korea's nuclear capabilities,
2) the threat Russia's defense of the Baltics,
3) the neverending Afghanistan quagmire,
4) the not always unfavorable comparisons to President Obama,
5) private discussions of Senator Lindsay Graham and President Trump,
6) disagreement among Executive staff regarding free trade,
7) discussions with Trump leading up to the tax cuts, and
8) Trump's total inability to speak under oath without perjuring himself.
4 stars for substance, 3 stars for writing execution.
Update: I’m reading Good and Mad by Rebecca Traister right now, and she doesn’t at all mention this book or Bob Woodward, but she does discuss white men in media, and I started thinking what an injustice this book is. Trump has been a racist, sexist monster and I’m still so angry that he suggested “the second amendment people” murder Hillary. Not to mention all the lives he’s callously destroyed while in office. Don’t tell me he doesn’t understand putting kids in detention camps. What he doesn’t understand is human decency or democracy. He doesn't deserve to be in the same room as, much less the same office as, former President Barack Obama. Trump does not deserve our sympathy just because he cried over one Syrian baby. Maybe Woodward only thinks Trump deserves our sympathy because he is in such a position of privilege that his life has not been materially affected by this atrocity yet.
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