If you were hoping that Bob Woodward’s book would spearhead the media effort to end Donald Trump’s presidency, you’re going to be disappointed.
It’s not that the book doesn’t make the Trump White House look bad — it does. But unlike Woodward’s muckraking against Nixon, Fear doesn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know about Trump and his White House.
If the accounts told in the book are accurate (and, again, they’re not hard to believe), there are several recurring themes that showed up in the anonymous op-ed in the New York Times.
Woodward shows a White House in disarray with a number of factions competing to persuade the president to see things their way. Most notably, it’s the globalists vs. the nationalists. The ones who believe that trade should be free and open to other countries and the ones who believe we need more protectionist policies to put American workers first.
An argument can be made that the nationalists helped Trump get into the White House. The book drops you right into when Steve Bannon, who was heading up Breitbart News, was in talks to become the chief executive of Trump’s presidential campaign.
Afterward, Trump dismissed Bannon’s role in helping him win the election, saying in January 2018, “Steve had very little to do with our historic victory, which was delivered by the forgotten men and women of this country.”
Yet, in Woodward’s book, one of the earlier takeaways is that Bannon may have been the only one in the campaign telling Trump to stay in the race after he was dogged with the Access Hollywood tape release in October 2016.
There are inconsistencies in the book that bring the accuracy of Woodward’s sources into question. For example, when H.R. McMaster was being interviewed for the position of national security adviser, he receives coaching from Bannon about what to say to Trump and what to wear. However, several pages later, Bannon is seen advising Trump not to hire McMaster “because he’s a fucking liberal.”
On the flip side, a case can be made that Woodward’s sourcing isn’t the problem, but it’s more so the issue that individuals like Bannon are trying to rewrite history.
There are other excerpts in the book that certainly were illuminating. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., was more influential to shaping policy in the Trump White House than previously believed. He pushed Trump to keep troops in Afghanistan, despite his fierce opposition, by saying he doesn’t want to have another 9/11 happen on his watch. He also urged the president to take a more hawkish stance towards North Korea and its leader Kim Jong Un.
Some of the details are downright entertaining. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis pushed back against former White House press secretary Sean Spicer’s nudge to go on the Sunday talk shows by saying, “Sean, I’ve killed people for a living. If you call me again, I’m going to fucking send you to Afghanistan. Are we clear?”
The book also takes a deep dive into special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. As much as Trump publicly berated Attorney General Jeff Sessions for recusing himself in the Russia probe, it was worse in private. Trump stewed about it, erupting into uncontrollable anger to a degree that no one in his inner circle had witnessed before. Former White House staff secretary Rob Porter said they barely got by.
Trump began feeling better about the Mueller probe after his then-lead counsel John Dowd prepared a memo explaining that the president would not sit down with Mueller and provide testimony. However, for some reason, Trump was being pushed in the direction of getting face time with the special counsel. Why? Woodward has no explanations.
There’s a good chance that Woodward’s sources embellished or exaggerated interactions and conversations they had with the president and other staff members. But as much as Trump critics want the book to bring down his presidency, it’s more like an episode of “The Office,” where Trump plays Michael Scott, and his staff attempts to curb his wild impulses that could doom the country.
