New Bob Woodward Book Tells a Tale of an Insulting, Unstable, Unschooled White House

We’ve seen so many Trump White House tell-all books, at this point, nobody is going to be surprised if the public issues a unified verdict of “meh” over the latest release to hit your bookstores.

Then again, unlike “Fire and Fury,” the upcoming release, “Fear: Trump in the White House” is written by none other than Bob Woodward, the award winning journalist, who, along with Carl Bernstein, made history with their reporting of the Watergate scandal in the early 70s.

The work of Woodward and Bernstein lent to the eventual resignation of President Richard Nixon.

So with this new book is Woodard, now a 75 year old man, simply chasing after past glory, or does he see something in the Trump White House that strikes a familiar chord?

I suppose what you believe will depend on what rings true, along with a healthy dose of whatever your particular partisan bent may be.

Various sources, including CNN and the Washington Post, actually released some of the accounts included in the book.

Here is where I want to make the distinction between Michael Wolff’s “Fire and Fury,” and Woodward’s book: Wolff apparently just parked outside offices within the White House and grabbed quotes where he could, then filled in the blanks around those quotes.

Woodward, on the other hand, is claiming more substantial background sources.

Woodward’s account is based on “hundreds of hours of interviews with firsthand sources, meeting notes, personal diaries, files and documents.”

This is where I insert that the response from the White House to this has been slow, but the responses are coming.

No one should be surprised that of those giving statements now, none are willing to say, “Yeah, I said that.”

It’s the usual base denials.

Still, given Trump’s behavior on social media, and just his overall, despicable behavior, some of these accounts seem extraordinarily believable.

Take, for instance, his private rants against Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a favorite target of Trump’s wrath, since he did the ethical thing and recused himself from the ongoing Russia probe.

According to Woodward’s book, the president mocked Sessions’ southern accent and called him “mentally retarded,” while venting to then-White House press secretary Rob Porter.

“This guy is mentally retarded. He’s this dumb Southerner,” Trump reportedly told Porter while using a Southern accent. “He couldn’t even be a one-person country lawyer down in Alabama.”

The president reportedly called Sessions a “traitor” for not overseeing special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

No, a “traitor” throws his nation’s intelligence community under the bus, while standing in the presence of leaders of a hostile foreign nation, but that’s just my estimation. Also, as someone with a heavy southern drawl, I think I’ll withhold my thoughts on anybody attacking someone’s intelligence, simply because of a regional accent.

Some of Woodward’s accounts mirror earlier anonymously-sourced reports from the White House Leakers Club:

Chief of staff John Kelly describes Trump as an “idiot” and “unhinged,” Woodward reports. Defense Secretary James Mattis describes Trump as having the understanding of “a fifth or sixth grader.” And Trump’s former personal lawyer John Dowd describes the President as “a f***ing liar,” telling Trump he would end up in an “orange jump suit” if he testified to special counsel Robert Mueller.

“He’s an idiot. It’s pointless to try to convince him of anything. He’s gone off the rails. We’re in crazytown,” Kelly is quoted as saying at a staff meeting in his office. “I don’t even know why any of us are here. This is the worst job I’ve ever had.”

Of those who have issued responses to the book today, Kelly and Dowd have both denied these reports.

Then there is the report of aides in a near-panic swiping paperwork from the president’s desk and hiding them.

Woodward sums up the state of the Trump White House by writing that Trump was an “emotionally overwrought, mercurial and unpredictable leader.” Woodward writes that the staff’s decision to circumvent the President was “a nervous breakdown of the executive power of the most powerful country in the world.”

One of those aforementioned aides is Gary Cohn, the former chief economic adviser, who left his position earlier this year, after disagreeing with Trump over tariffs.

The book opens with a panicked Cohn noticing a draft on Trump’s desk that held potentially dangerous ramifications for national defense.

The letter would have withdrawn the US from a critical trade agreement with South Korea. Trump’s aides feared the fallout could jeopardize a top-secret national security program: the ability to detect a North Korean missile launch within just seven seconds.

Woodward reports Cohn was “appalled” that Trump might sign the letter. “I stole it off his desk,” Cohn told an associate. “I wouldn’t let him see it. He’s never going to see that document. Got to protect the country.”

Porter, who left his position after multiple accounts of abusing former wives or girlfriends emerged, is one of those willing to speak on the record.

“A third of my job was trying to react to some of the really dangerous ideas that he had and try to give him reasons to believe that maybe they weren’t such good ideas,” said Porter, who as staff secretary handled the flow of presidential papers until he quit amid domestic violence allegations. He and others acted with the acquiescence of former chief of staff Reince Priebus, Woodward reports.

Woodward describes repeated attempts to bypass Trump as “no less than an administrative coup d’état.”

Another amazing anecdote includes former Trump attorney, John Dowd. Woodward writes that one night, he, and later current Trump attorney, Jay Sekulow, tested Trump by putting him through a practice interview, in order to see how he would react during an interview with special counsel Robert Mueller.

The incident caused a considerable amount of shock.

Woodward writes that Dowd saw the “full nightmare” of a potential Mueller interview, and felt Trump acted like an “aggrieved Shakespearean king.”

But Trump seemed surprised at Dowd’s reaction, Woodward writes. “You think I was struggling?” Trump asked.

Then, in an even more remarkable move, Dowd and Trump’s current personal attorney Jay Sekulow went to Mueller’s office and re-enacted the mock interview. Their goal: to argue that Trump couldn’t possibly testify because he was incapable of telling the truth.

“He just made something up. That’s his nature,” Dowd said to Mueller.

This part is amazing, actually. They went to Mueller to demonstrate why their client shouldn’t be trusted in an interview?

And I absolutely believe Trump acted like an “aggrieved Shakespearean king.” He does that every day on Twitter.

“I need the president’s testimony,” Mueller said. “What was his intent on Comey? … I want to see if there was corrupt intent.”

Despite Dowd’s efforts, Trump continued to insist he could testify. “I think the President of the United States cannot be seen taking the fifth,” Trump said.

Dowd’s argument was stark: “There’s no way you can get through these. … Don’t testify. It’s either that or an orange jump suit.”

What he couldn’t say to Trump, according to Woodward, was what Dowd believed to be true: “You’re a f***ing liar.”

So does Trump attack anyone else, besides Jeff Sessions?

According to Woodward, he referred to former Chief of Staff Reince Priebus as being “like a rat.”

He also went after former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and did so right to his face.

This was before Giuliani was his attorney, and maybe the argument could be made that they’re old friends and probably talk to each other this way, but it’s hard to say.

Giuliani was the only Trump campaign surrogate to defend then-candidate Trump, once the “Access Hollywood” tape became public.

“Rudy, you’re a baby,” Trump told the man who is now his attorney. “I’ve never seen a worse defense of me in my life. They took your diaper off right there. You’re like a little baby that needed to be changed. When are you going to be a man?”

Maybe that’s why it seems like Giuliani is trying to sink the man’s defense, now. Just a thought.

Trump’s predecessors are not spared either. In a conversation with Sen. Lindsey Graham, Trump called President Barack Obama a “weak d**k” for not acting in Syria, Woodward reports.

Remember the allegations of former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson referring to Trump as a “moron”?

Woodward appears to shed some light on that incident in the book.

At a Pentagon meeting with his security team, the goal was to attempt to enlighten the president on the touchy subjects around allies and diplomacy on the world stage.

Trump went off on his generals. “You should be killing guys. You don’t need a strategy to kill people,” Trump said of Afghanistan.

He questioned the wisdom of keeping US troops in South Korea.

“So Mr. President,” Cohn said to Trump, “what would you need in the region to sleep well at night?”

“I wouldn’t need a fucking thing,” the President said. “And I’d sleep like a baby.”

After Trump left the Tank, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson declared: “He’s a f***ing moron.”

Woodward also quotes an unnamed White House official who gave an even more dire assessment of the meeting: “It seems clear that many of the president’s senior advisers, especially those in the national security realm, are extremely concerned with his erratic nature, his relative ignorance, his inability to learn, as well as what they consider his dangerous views.”

And for those who were concerned that Jared Kushner and the favored Trump child, Ivanka, have had an oversized influence on Daddy Trump, if Woodward’s book is even close to true, they’re right to be concerned.

In once incident, Woodward describes a blow up between Ivanka and former chief strategist, Steve Bannon:

“You’re nothing but a f***ing staffer!” Bannon screamed at Ivanka at a staff meeting, according to Woodward. “You walk around this place and act like you’re in charge, and you’re not. You’re on staff!”

“I’m not a staffer!” she shouted back. “I’ll never be a staffer. I’m the first daughter” — she really used the title, Woodward writes — “and I’m never going to be a staffer!”

And what power does being the first daughter hold?

Apparently, she feels it holds a lot.

And what about some of the more glaring Trump screw ups, like when he referred to the “good people” on both sides of the Charlottesville, Virginia incident from August, 2017?

After Trump’s Charlottesville, Virginia, controversy, in which he failed to condemn white supremacists, Cohn tried to resign but was instead dressed down by Trump and accused of “treason.”

Kelly, who is Trump’s current chief of staff, told Cohn afterward, according to notes Cohn made of the exchange: “If that was me, I would have taken that resignation letter and shoved it up his a** six different times.”

Ouch!

It’s a lot, and as I said, this is just the latest in a library full of Trump White House books. We can only assume Trump’s Twitter rant on the topic is going to be glorious.