For nearly half a century, Bob Woodward of The Washington Post has been reporting on presidents and power. But not since he covered the Watergate scandal in the 1970s has he assayed a presidency in crisis the way he does in Fear: Trump in the White House. Woodward has published 18 previous books, most of them about presidents. They typically offer a rather doleful view of the world and an unsparing assessment of American political leaders. But Fear belongs in a new category. Many readers will find Woodward’s depiction of this president and his presidency so devastating that it can only be described as an indictment. President Trump is portrayed as uncouth, uninformed and unprepared for the demands of his office. Moreover, he appears convinced that the same braggadocio that made him rich and made him president will make the world conform to his own view of it. It is hard to say which of the hot items in Woodward’s newest tell-all pack the most wallop. But an early front-runner would be the story about then-chief economic adviser Gary Cohn spiriting documents away from the president’s desk to prevent him from signing them. One such document, we are told, would have ended the U.S. trade relationship with South Korea. Another was to have unilaterally withdrawn the U.S. from its trade agreements with Canada and Mexico. “Got to protect the country,” Cohn is reported to have told a colleague. Swiping the papers is only one skirmish in the running battle over trade detailed at length by Woodward. And that is but one battle in the larger White House warfare over immigrants, the wars in Afghanistan and Syria, the negotiations with China and Japan, and the endless relitigating of the 2016 election. But the Cohn anecdote, told at the outset of the book, distills the impression of Trump as both irresponsible and distractible. He is the autocrat as adolescent (“Bring me my tariffs!”), swift to anger and struggling with self-control so much that national security officials have to talk him out of bombing North Korea or assassinating the president of Syria. Another recurring theme is the elasticity of the president’s tether to fact, or even to the last
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