My Amazon Review of Bob Woodward's "Fear: Trump in the White House"

LOSER

Famed journalist Bob Woodward has written a book about an undisciplined narcissist who also happens to be a congenital liar; unfortunately he is the President of the United States. Much of the juicy tidbits in Woodward’s book have already been widely disseminated in the media so I won’t bore you by repeating them.

What comes across loud and clear is that Trump hates trade. He even writes in a briefing packet “Trade is bad”.  Like a stubborn 14 year old he is unyielding in his beliefs about trade even the face of strong evidence placed before him by his staff. As was widely noted Trump was ready to blow up the Korea –U.S. trade agreement just when we were working hand in glove with South Korea on the North Korea nuke problem. Woodward demonstrates how that jerk, Peter Navarro with his mercantilist views, plays to Trump’s worst instincts and somehow has easy access to the Oval Office.

Woodward was very successful in getting leading administration figures to talk to him mostly on deep background, but sometimes on the record. We can hear the voices of Steve Bannon, Gary Cohn, Trump lawyer John Dowd, Lindsay Graham, John Kelly, H.R. McMaster, Rob Porter, Reince Priebus, and Rex Tillerson. We continually see Priebus, Cohn, Porter and McMaster valiantly trying save Trump from his worst instincts. Although they had some successes, in the end they failed. It is a shame that Porter’s domestic difficulties forced him out; he was a real check on Trump.

The book ends in March so there is no discussion of the North Korea, G-7 and Putin summits. Hopefully Woodward will soon give us some insights into those events. Further for those looking for evidence of a Trump-Russia conspiracy, it is not here.

Let me close with what Steve Bannon said with respect to the effects of #MeToo on the coming election.

  “Trump is the perfect foil. He’s the bad father, the terrible first husband, the

     boyfriend that f*****d you over and wasted all those years and (you) gave up

     your youth for, and then dumped you. And the terrible boss that grabbed you

     by the p***y all the time and demeaned you.”

Woodward gives the reader a real flavor of how the Trump White House works and he proves that Jeb Bush was dead right when he said that Donald Trump would be the “chaos president.”

The full Amazon URL appears at: https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R3T7G4N8GXMMXZ/ref=cm_cr_getr_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B075RV48W3