Book review: Bob Woodward's 'Rage'

Readers, he's much worse than you thought.

The first quarter of Rage is rather ho-hum, nothing much new as Bob Woodward sets the stage.  Momentum picks up when the Trump interviews begin.

This, with Michael Cohen's Disloyal, serve up a man as scatter-brained, tempestuous, vindictive, immature, hateful and superficial as one can possibly imagine any fictional character to be, but he is real, and, praise God, soon to leave Washington, D.C. for, we hope, forever.  Goodbye, you n'er do well!  2021 is looking better and better.

These books confirm my observation that Trump is not that smart. He's more like a toddler throwing temper tantrums. It's all for him or nothing. "I want my way! I want my way!" he bellows, and like a subservient parent, the media gives him "his way" (Cohen). The media elected him, says Cohen. Wait, this is a review of Woodward's book, not Cohen's. Where was I? (Now on to Bolton's.)

Interspersed in Rage are sections on Dr. Anthony Fauci, who, of course, plays a key role as coronavirus takes the spotlight and control from Trump and his sycophants.  The revelations about covid-19's strangulation of the U.S. brings one of the book's few humorous parts when Dr. Fauci describes Trump on page 354:  "His attention span is like a minus number.... His sole purpose is to get re-elected." 

No wonder Trump kicks up a fuss when he loses!  He will not believe it, and no one will tell the emperor he has no clothes.  He's nothing but a blunderbuss who recalcitrant Retrumplicans (Chris Cuomo) are afraid to challenge since the bully may sick a sickophant (sic!) their way! 

Mr. Woodward and Trump give serious discussion to the possibility that China deliberately set the U.S. on virus fire mimicking the SARS outbreak in 2002.

Mr. Woodward's epilogue ends:

 "When his performance as president is taken in its entirety, I can only reach one conclusion:  Trump is the wrong man for the job."  

For a second Rage edition, may I suggest the addition of a leaderboard for readers like me who find it somewhat difficult to keep all the players straight.   

Also, a correction for the location of the Feb. 11, 2020 event (page 244) found in "Source Notes" (p. 411) with Dr. Fauci at the Aspen Institute: It was held here, at Aspen's offices in Washington, D.C. not in Colorado . I know because I was there, and although unlikely, it is possible that the panel presented the same subject on the same day at the Aspen offices in Colorado. (One of the panelists was Ron Klain, later appointed to be President-Elect Biden's chief of staff. Also, it was the same day coronavirus got its official name, covid-19.) 

About the number of presidents (p. 391):  Although there have been 45 presidencies, there have only been 44 presidents since Grover Cleveland served two non-consecutive terms (1885-1889 and 1893-1897).

patricialesli@gmail.com

John Dean, Watergate, and Jim Acosta

John Dean, left, and Jim Acosta at National Archives, June 1, 2022/Photo by Patricia Leslie

It was a Washington crowd, after all, where most of us think alike (no friends of Trump) and groaned and laughed at the best of lines.

John Dean was in town at National Archives to talk about the upcoming CNN series Watergate: Blueprint for a Scandal beginning Sunday night, June 5, at 9 p.m. and CNN's Jim Acosta was there with him to ask a few questions.

John Dean, left, and Jim Acosta at National Archives, June 1, 2022/Photo by Patricia Leslie

Dean looks healthy and about ten years younger than his 83 years.

He said he had saved lots of his papers and goods which he pitched to CNN a while back as the 50th anniversary of the Watergate break-in on June 17, 1972 nears, and CNN took the idea and ran with it.

If the first show is an indication of the quality, it'll be an excellent series!

National Archives, June 1, 2022/Photo by Patricia Leslie

Dean was the personal lawyer for President Richard Nixon hired when he was only 31 and advised not to take the job by then U.S. Deputy Attorney General, Richard Kleindienst (1923-2000), but who's going to reject a White House job offer?

Not Dean.

Not anybody!

Nixon knew he was breaking the law, but that didn't stop him from breaking the law, Dean said, and Nixon sicced the IRS on various "enemies" which his team thought was “great stuff [to use], but I thought it was awful,” Dean says.

Nixon’s team sabotaged the 1972 presidential campaign of Edmund Muskie (1914-1966) with a fake letter which led to Muskie's withdrawal from the race. 

Dean described G. Gordon Liddy (1930-2021), a Nixon deputy who directed the Watergate break-in, as “radioactive.”

Walking near the White House with Liddy one day after Watergate was discovered, Dean said he'd never forget a conversation they had. Liddy pleaded with Dean that if it became necessary "to take him [Liddy] out," to please do it anywhere but his house where his children were.

Before Watergate, the Nixon gang came up with other grand schemes to obtain sources of leaks and find damaging information about their opponents, Dean said, like "firebombing" the Brookings Institution and hiring prostitutes to lure secrets from attendees at the 1972 Democratic National Convention in Miami Beach. 

The absurdities of the ideas produced loud guffaws from the Archives' audience. 

Dean took credit for single-handedly killing the Brookings plot when he told H.R "Bob" Haldeman (1926-1993), a chief Nixon lieutenant, that it was "insane."

At times in the show, Dean's heroics make him seem grander than he was. He did spend four months in prison and was disbarred in Virginia and the District of Columbia (which go unmentioned, at least in the first show).

Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the Washington Post reporters who broke the Watergate story, lead the show, aided by memories from CBS's Lesley Stahl who describes Nixon's henchmen John Ehrlichman (1925-1999) as personable and likeable, but, Haldeman, his partner in crime, was "dark" and "humorless." (No surprise to anyone who lived during the era.)

Nixon later denied pardon requests to both because he was annoyed by their tactics and unfaithfulness to him.

After only a year of working in the White House, “I was losing my respect for these people,” Dean said to audience laughter. When he broached the idea of leaving, Haldeman threatened him with inclusion on Nixon's enemies list.*

During the evening, laughter, moans, and/or groans often greeted the name of Donald Trump whenever it came up, which was probably more often than any other contemporary's.  

At the conclusion of the film, Acosta asked Dean, “why is this story so relevant now?” and the audience sighed loudly.

Dean: “It's impossible to look at Watergate now" and ignore comparisons to the Trump administration. In “an understatement,” Trump does or did not want to follow the law, and the audience laughed again.

“Nobody made ignoring standard operating procedures illegal until we get to the Trump years,” Dean said.

He spent 4.5 years with graduate students transcribing the Watergate tapes, and Archives has much of the material.

Acosta: “Did this country learn its lesson from Watergate?” and the audience, with mixed ages, groaned again.

Dean thinks Washington was sensitized to Watergate’s lessons for the first ten years after the scandal, "but since then….My hope is that they [the January 6 Committee] have witnesses who quietly come forward.”

Acosta: What will happen to our democracy?

Dean: “I worry much more about it now. During Watergate, I never worried about a constitutional crisis,” but things are different now with the Republicans carrying Trump’s water.

The show's music is fitting, if sometimes harsh and overpowering which may have been due to acoustics in the Archives' McGowan Theatre where almost every seat was filled.

The interview lasted about 15 minutes and no questions from the audience were taken.

*Some of the names from Nixon's "enemies list" floated on the screen including that of U.S. Rep. Shirley Chisholm (D-NY) (1994-2005), whose 50th anniversary of her presidential launch is celebrated this year, too. Last week she was featured in an excellent talk by Ashleigh Coren at the National Portrait Gallery which, alas, has no planned exhibitions on Ms. Chisholm.

This is also the 50th anniversary of the founding of CNN.

patricialesli@gmail.com

Rating the Trump books

I haven't read the estimated 4,500 Trump books which is the amount the Guardian estimates has been published since he took office in 2017, but I have read a few which I rank for you below.

My choices are based on new information, style, interest, content, documentation, readability.

If you only have time to read one, the best, most interesting, the one which is most captivating, whose author still commands a daily audience (if you follow him on Twitter) is:

1.  Michael Cohen's Disloyal: A Memoir: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump. It's short and fast. In retrospect (I read it last year), I can't believe it's 432 pages for it seems like half that, which gives you an idea of the speed per page.

2.  John Bolton's The Room Where It Happened:  A White House Memoir, filled with lots of anecdotes and behind-the-scenes glimpses of what went on when Mr. Bolton spent 17 months in the Wild House. Lots of unexpected humor by means of the author's snarky comments. 592 pages.

3.  Mary Trump's Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man.  She, of course, is his niece and a clinical psychologist.  Very quick. Short and not so sweet. 240 pages.

4.  Bob Woodward's Rage. A little dry in places, but, if you get this far, worth a read. 480 pages.

4.  (A Tie with Woodward's) Peter Strzok's Compromised: Counterintelligence and the Threat of Donald J. Trump.  I listened to this book by a former FBI assistant director.  Why the author doesn't sue Trump for defamation is beyond me. Perhaps Trump's office at the time protects him who can say whatever he wanted since that's what his content is. 387 pages.

I read about half of Brian Stelter's Hoax:  Donald Trump, Fox News and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth until I finally realized (dumb me!  Read the sub-title!) it really was about Fox and who cares about Fox? Mr. Stelter is the host of CNN's Reliable Sources which airs every Sunday at 11 a.m. and which I try not to miss. 448 pages.

If you have recommendations and/or comments, please write up!  Thank you.

I be done with Trump and his books (I hope!).

patricialesli@gmail.com

Book review: Michael Cohen's 'Disloyal' is must-read

Dear Michael Cohen,

I waited weeks to get your book on the reserve list at the public library and told everyone  when I got in the middle of it, that it's a "must."  I have bought two copies for Christmas gifts, one for my Trumper son, a new attorney, so he can see how you developed and used your lawyerly skills, and the other for my pal, Kim.

At the end just now, all I could say was "WOW." Right on, bro'!  I hope you earn billions from sales.

Whether or not you like Mr. Cohen for ratting on his Boss Man, this is must reading (for the hardcore).

Although no collaborator is mentioned for the book, I suspect one existed  since Disloyal  is exceedingly well assembled and flows mightily down the Trump sewage tank, telling all, an insight into Trump World which pretty well matches the sense we've gained from four years of watching what is perceived as White House chaos and confirmed to be just that by Mr. Cohen.

Disloyal, A Memoir, is a page-turner, all right.

That Ted Cruz can even stand to speak to Trump or be near him after the merciless attack Trump and Team made on Mr. Cruz's father, is shocking. It all began with National Enquirer's David Pecker's assertion that a man photographed with Lee Harvey Oswald bore a resemblance to Mr. Cruz's father and away the conspirators flew.  (Mr. Cruz was a preacher who got under the Trump team's skin.)  Beyond the Enquirer, the story failed to launch until Trump ignited it on, where else? Fox.

Or, the Trumps' creation of birtherism is disgusting, pure and simple, all lies, fitting for this administration, but how it "birthed" the slander is astonishing.

Mr. Cohen says the media elected Trump in 2016 with free press every time Trump did anything remotely outrageous which, as we know, occurs daily.  Often, more than once.

Melania knows her husband is a cheater but Trump tells Mr. Cohen, "I can always get another wife."  

That Michael Cohen's beloved family has held firm to their husband and father in the wake of all the Trump cheats and lies is testimony to a family's endurance and will to combat Evil.

Mr. Cohen lays it all out and takes no pride in his fall to hell where he says the Trump cult resides, in adoration of the master, unable to stop gulping Trump's Kool-Aid.  Mr. Cohen accurately predicted Trump would never leave office willingly or with any traditional grace which cannot be a surprise to anyone.

BTW, I read most of Brian Stelter's Hoax, but more than halfway through, I asked myself:  "Why do you care about Fox?" and ended it right then and there.  Too many anonymous quotes are found herein, but I love Mr.  Stelter's Sunday show, Reliable Sources, and would not miss it. I wonder why CNN didn't use him on E-night.

Next up: Bob Woodward's Rage 

Patricialesli@gmail.com