The more I think about it, the more this book gets to me. The conversations Woodward has recorded absolutely blow my mind. While this book is not as engaging as Disloyal by Cohen was, writing-wise, it more than makes up for it in the sheer amount of data and detailed observations from those around the president. This isn’t Watergate type investigating, but it’s thorough and instructive. You can tell it’s written by a seasoned journalist.
I’m a life-long Republican who read Rage because I’m looking for more data on Trump. I am spending so much time internally debating if I can in good conscience vote for Trump simply to stay loyal to the Republican party. I make up my mind to vote for someone else, swing back and tell myself I’d be supporting the party – not Trump – if I vote for him, and the pendulum starts its swing back again. There are things that I really like about the Republican party and things that I don’t like. A major sticking-point at the moment is that they nominated Trump for reelection. I still cannot wrap my mind around that.
Anyway, I’d recently read Disloyal by Michael Cohen, which reinforced my belief, developed over the last 8 or 9 months, that there is something not quite right with President Trump. His actions as reported in the news and his tweets have been simply bizarre. The inconsistencies and contradictions in his narrative, the self-centeredness and self-promoting, the lies, the seeming lack of accurate recall, the level of hate and rage leveled at people who were recently praised, it’s all strangely familiar. I’m one of the caregivers for my dad-in-law, who suffers from narcissism, Parkinsonism, and dementia, among other things, and Trump’s and my dad-in-law’s behaviors are weirdly and alarmingly alike.
But I wanted more data since I can’t order an in-depth cognitive competency assessment for Trump. (Perhaps we can start a change dot org petition for cognitive testing and an MRI of his brain to rule out physical causes?) I felt that Bob Woodward, with his journalistic training, might possibly have a more balanced accounting given all the interviews he did gathering background for this book.
I didn’t expect him to be totally unbiased, and I’m sure he wasn’t. But I did expect him to report the facts and give accurate quotes from recorded interviews, and he seems to have done that. I was a bit upset over the reveal a few days ago that Woodward knew Trump was taking the virus seriously in private, but minimizing it to the American people and had not reported that at the time, but I’d already preordered the book and committed myself mentally to reading it. I wondered if Woodward withheld that information to sell more books later, vying for another Pulitzer. I have no clue. (Woodward does have a comment about not being focused on that at the time.)
Trump seems to have cognitive issues, and yet, it is really hard for me to step across party lines. I have voted Republican since the year I tromped through the snow in New Hampshire with other college students campaigning for Reagan and worked a press conference held for him on my university’s campus. This will probably the first general election that I do not vote for the Republican candidate.
Truthfully, I don’t particularly like Biden, either. He’s a professional politician who’s run for president multiple times since the 80’s. That’s not a rousing endorsement in my book. (Please, people, give us someone new and idealistic.) And yet, he’s the lesser evil in my eyes at the moment. (And, no, I’m not saying he’s evil. That’s an expression.) Frankly, I want new parties or no parties or some change in the system that encourages new blood and better candidates or lets us choose new candidates if we don’t like the ones that we are offered. (Yes, I know I’m ranting.)
Trump has serious cognitive issues as well based on his bizarre utterances. Some instances of him acting as if he had no idea of his previous conversations include when he told his intelligence heads to hold a briefing and then interrogated them the next day wondering why they had done that. Coats had to tell Trump, “because you told us to.” Not to mention recently Trump thought that simple cognitive test was hard and was confused enough that he thought that acing it meant that he was very intelligent. I can attest from watching my dad that a person can have serious cognitive deficits and still ace that test easily. The smarter you are, the longer you can fool doctors who only do the minimum testing.
I’m not going to rehash the book, except to include some quotes below. The major takeaway from Rage is more testimony about Trump handling people, situations, and the global and national virus outbreak by spurning the advice of the experts he hired, disparaging those very experts, and doing things his way: impromptu, uninformed, and aimed almost totally at his own reelection.
Due to Rage (and also Disloyal) I’m convinced that Trump has always been a conniving, amoral narcissist that Woodward has tried to represent honestly. His conclusion matches what Cohen implies: “Trump is the wrong man for the job.”
Some quotes from Rage:
“And in an interview with President Trump on March 19, six weeks before I learned of O’Brien’s and Pottinger’s warnings, the president said his statements in the early weeks of the virus had been deliberately designed to not draw attention to it. ‘I wanted to always play it down,” Trump told me. “I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.’”
“‘And I think he’s going to have it in good shape,’ Trump said, ‘but you know, it’s a very tricky situation.’ What made it ‘tricky’? ‘It goes through air,’ Trump said. ‘That’s always tougher than the touch. You don’t have to touch things. Right? But the air, you just breathe the air and that’s how it’s passed. And so that’s a very tricky one. That’s a very delicate one. It’s also more deadly than even your strenuous flus.”
"“Look,” Trump said, “when you’re running a country it’s full of surprises. There’s dynamite behind every door.” Years ago, I had once heard a similar expression used by military forces to describe the hazards and nerve-racking emotions of house-to-house searches in a violent combat zone. I was surprised at this “dynamite behind every door” language from Trump. Instead of being his usual upbeat, cheerleading or angry self, the president sounded foreboding, even unconfident with a touch of unexpected fatalism."
“‘There’s dynamite behind every door’ seemed the most self-aware statement about the jeopardy, pressures and responsibilities of the presidency I had heard Trump make in public or private. Yet the unexpected headline from the call was also his detailed knowledge of the virus and his description of it as so deadly so early in February, more than a month before it began to engulf him, his presidency and the United States. And so at odds with his public tone.”
“Decision by tweet, often without warning to those charged with executing his policies, was one of the biggest sticks of dynamite behind the door.”
“On January 28, 2020, when Trump’s national security adviser and his deputy warned Trump that the virus would be—not might be, but would be—the biggest national security threat to his presidency, the leadership clock had to be reset. It was a detailed forecast, supported by evidence and experience that unfortunately turned out to be correct. Presidents are the executive branch. There was a duty to warn. To listen, to plan, and to take care.”
“At the next intelligence briefing, Trump blew up in a rage and began to chew them all out. What was that briefing? he asked, apparently upset about all the focus on Russia. “Why’d you do that?” “Because we were told to do that by you,” Coats said.”
“For nearly 50 years, I have written about nine presidents from Nixon to Trump—20 percent of the 45 U.S. presidents. A president must be willing to share the worst with the people, the bad news with the good. All presidents have a large obligation to inform, warn, protect, to define goals and the true national interest. It should be a truth-telling response to the world, especially in crisis. Trump has, instead, enshrined personal impulse as a governing principle of his presidency.”
“When his performance as president is taken in its entirety, I can only reach one conclusion: Trump is the wrong man for the job.”
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Popular Highlights in this book
“You don’t always control your circumstances, but you can control your response.”Highlighted by 1,836 Kindle readers- “I wanted to always play it down,” Trump told me. “I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.”Highlighted by 1,788 Kindle readers
- “It goes through air,” Trump said. “That’s always tougher than the touch. You don’t have to touch things. Right? But the air, you just breathe the air and that’s how it’s passed. And so that’s a very tricky one. That’s a very delicate one. It’s also more deadly than even your strenuous flus.”Highlighted by 1,732 Kindle readers
- “There’s dynamite behind every door” seemed the most self-aware statement about the jeopardy, pressures and responsibilities of the presidency I had heard Trump make in public or private.Highlighted by 1,356 Kindle readers
From the Publisher
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About the author
Don’t just watch the news. Read this stunning and brilliant page turner.
This is an absolutely brilliant book that takes you inside the Trump presidency Including the president‘a style of decision-making and management. The book is also a page turner so don’t start reading it late at night or you might not get to sleep until the early hours of the morning.Some of the contents of this book are already known due to the intensive and important news coverage of Bob Woodward‘s most powerful revelations. There is however a lot here that is not mentioned in the news and is important to learn about as well. The chapters on North Korea for example are absolutely mesmerizing. The absolutely towering sense of duty by General James Mattis is also quite striking as he struggled heroically to prevent a US-North Korean war. In this book, Director of National intelligence, Dan Coats also emerges as a patriot doing his absolute best for the United States despite terrible difficulties.If you want to be a well-informed citizen, and have time to read only one book this year, this is the book.
Top reviews from other countries
Philip M
Insider’s view of embattled President complete with sulks, boasts and rage.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 22, 2021
