It is not Fire and Fury redux or Omarosa 2.0. Like Joe Friday on Dragnet, Jack Webb’s television classic, Woodward’s Fear is big on facts and short on hyperventilation. Or a presidential candidate, Trump, who virtually scrapped his pre-election transition efforts so as not to be jinxed, post-election chaos be damned. Imagine a campaign manager like the newly convicted Paul Manafort who never bothered to tell his boss that he, Manafort, was under investigation for pocketing more than $12m in foreign cash until the New York Times was about to go to print. Rather, it is a sober account of how we reached this vertiginous pointĮven during the campaign, Trumpworld was its own special brand of cray-cray, one that channeled the tempestuousness of its prime mover. This is not Fire and Fury redux or Omarosa 2.0. Woodward is not describing the usual flavors of palace intrigue that come with the turf. Trump is continually reminded of the legal constraints that encumber the presidency, that dyspeptic diktats are not substitutes for legislation or even executive orders, and that the White House counsel and attorney general ultimately owe duties to their country and offices, not reflexively to the guy who hired them.įear depicts a White House awash in dysfunction, where the Lord of the Flies is the closest thing to an owner’s manual. From beginning to end, Woodward treats us to a portrait of an occupant of the Oval Office who sucks the life out of his subordinates. Trump demonstrably lost the popular vote his legitimacy emanates solely from the provisions of the document he appears to hold in the same regard as the truth.įear, the latest chronicle of a president from Bob Woodward, who with Carl Bernstein did so much to bring down Richard Nixon, only reinforces this dismal picture. Yet even as Trump wages war on free speech and the first amendment, he appears to have forgotten that the only reason he holds office is the constitution itself.

Fear by Bob Woodward