One of my favorite moments in the Woodward book:
“Trump liked signing. It meant he was doing things, and he had an up-and-down penmanship that looked authoritative in black Magic Marker.”
cc: @dandrezner— Carlos Lozada (@CarlosLozadaWP) September 10, 2018
Bob Woodward’s massive volumes are not meant to be read from start to finish, any more than one would read the motel Yellow Pages alphabetically in search of an open diner. They are expensive objects meant to establish the buyer’s political savvy, or to search the index for anecdotes about one’s frenemies. Most of them roll out for the media tour under the hidden subtext that Everything Is Working Out for the Best; the newest — note the snappy title! — falls into the small & lethal category of This Subject Has Become A Problem And Will Be Dealt With Accordingly.
Yet despite Woodward’s sterling history among the highly credentialed, reviewers no longer seem completely convinced he can repeat his 1974 marketing coup. Isaac Chotiner, at Slate, says “Bob Woodward’s new book presents Trump staffers as our last line of defense. We’re doomed.”
… Woodward’s book—which arrived at around the same time as the already infamous, still-currently anonymous New York Times op-ed about the men and women in the executive branch supposedly working to protect America from Donald Trump—is as much a portrait of the craven, ineffective, and counterproductive group of “adults” surrounding Trump as it is a more predictable look into the president’s shortcomings. It’s not entirely clear how aware Woodward is of what he has revealed about the people he’s quoting at length. (Sources tend to come off well in his books.) But intentionally or not, Fear will make plain to the last optimist that, just as Republicans in Congress are unlikely to save us, neither are the relative grown-ups in the Trump administration.
Is Woodward the last optimist? He obviously believes that Trump is unfit to be president, but a reader can’t quite shake the sense that he somehow thinks maybe, just maybe, things could be different with the right coaching or incentives. Fear is a book full of stories about Trump being contained; his instincts being thwarted; his worst qualities being slightly minimized by people who claim to be afraid of what would happen if they weren’t there. “It’s not what we did for the country,” former Trump economic adviser Gary Cohn says early on. “It’s what we saved him from doing.” Quotes like this aim to settle the ethical debate—which has been going on from the start of the Trump presidency—over whether anyone should be working for a bigoted and corrupt president with no respect for democracy, even if they are planning to, in that most tiresome phrase, contain his worst impulses. But that conversation has obscured the more pressing question of what those supposedly well-intentioned individuals can actually accomplish from the inside. Even allowing for the self-serving nature of the accounts that Woodward offers here, the answer appears to be: not much.
Indeed, the near-misses Woodward writes about feel particularly insubstantial, in part because very few of these aides and appointees seem to really grasp the nature of the man they are serving (no matter how much they talk about his stupidity and recklessness), and in part because Trump himself is so clueless and aimless that he rarely seems to follow through on his worst ideas anyway. (The terrible things he has followed through on, such as various immigration policies, are not really discussed at length, and on these matters a good chunk of his staff appear to agree with him.) Moreover, many of these aides are tasked with—or see their roles as—not preventing policy decisions, but instead putting the nicest, non-Trumpy face on Trumpism; the ethics of this deserves its own debate…But don’t tell the people who worked in the White House that maybe they didn’t actually do anything to mitigate the unfolding disaster, even though most readers of Woodward’s book will probably come away feeling grateful for their brave sacrifices. “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,” Porter says at one point, in self-pitying fashion, and without any convincing specifics. And no matter how incompetent and horrible Trump is, his staff never throws in the towel. Porter, 20 pages after his “breaking point” over Charlottesville, is heard lamenting the incapacity of the president to fulfill his duties, but ascribes it to the specific stress of the Russia investigation. The dream will never die…
Oh cool, something struck Rob Porter instead of the other way around. https://t.co/3DrVf24Ocp
— shauna (@goldengateblond) September 11, 2018
I think Woodward is freaking out Trump the most because in his limited grasp of history he's the guy who brought down a presidency. It's that basic.
— Schooley (@Rschooley) September 11, 2018
Pretty sure they were leaking anonymously to Bob Woodward back in 1973 as well. https://t.co/EAViSTGtfR
— Byron Tau (@ByronTau) September 8, 2018
This press release for "Fear" includes a long list of supportive quotes about Woodward. Look at the very end for a quote from none other than President Trump. "You've always been fair," Trump told Woodward last month… pic.twitter.com/Hc5vPFDz2M
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) September 11, 2018
JWL
Extract from Woodward’s book: “Do you want on your résumé that you allowed Afghanistan to go back into the darkness and the second 9/11 came from the very place the first 9/11 did?” Graham asked the president, rhetorically, in an effort to encourage Trump to step up U.S. troop commitments there.
“Well, how does this end?” Woodward recounts Trump asking. “It never ends,” Graham replied, in rhetoric reminiscent of the Trump-maligned neoconservatism of George W. Bush. “It’s good versus evil. Good versus evil never ends.”
That’s a scene straight out of The Outlaw Josey Wales. Remember, the scene at the ferry? Best of all, it’s so, so easy to picture Lindsey Graham as the pipe smoking hillbilly grandma wearing a gingham dress, cackling with glee as Trump weighs the import of what he’s just heard.
Be honest. Lindsey Graham as a grandmother in a gingham dress is not that big a stretch to imagine, is it? You’ve already done it, haven’t you?.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I love the massive troll of trump, and it’s kind of funny to hear Establishment Bob tell people they have to “wake up”, but as twitter Nixon is pointing out, the account of John Dowd’s meeting with Mueller rings about as true as a trump tweet, and as I can’t remember who pointed out, Woodward’s chief sources appear to be a wife-beater, the former head of Goldman Sachs and trump’s barely competent ex-lawyer desperately trying to cover his ass
TenguPhule
Sorry Ben, we couldn’t keep the Republic.
Leto
Speaking of minions, the Walrus is back in the news:
ICC will continue ‘undeterred’ after US threats
ian
@JWL:
If only those neo-cons could get their war with Iran and North Korea on, all these pesky little distractions at home would just vanish!
The ‘cure’ is just as bad as the disease.
Emerald
No. Woodward is a Republican and Beltway guru who probably voted for Trump.
The major mistake the Clintons made while in the White House was not throwing barbeques for the Beltway crowd. They could have wooed those paper-thin egos to their side all those years ago. Think how the world would be different today.
Leto
Would the NY op-ed then be considered a marketing tie-in? Part of the PR blitz ahead of the books release?
jimmiraybob
If people were slipping documents off the desk to keep him from signing them then why wouldn’t we be worried about someone slipping something onto his desk for him to sign? I haven’t heard this discussed.
Jager
I have a “Baby Aunt” my Mom’s youngest sister, who is almost 8 years younger than I am. She’s a full on MAGAt. I poked her this morning asking if she could somehow get her president not to act like a 7th grade boy at a fucking 911 memorial service. I noted that there is no way in hell my Grandmother/her mother would have tolerated behavior like trump’s. She went off like a rocket. My sister has been sending her tid-bits from “Fear”. She has some creative explanations for each one.
Major Major Major Major
@Leto: seems a little baroque.
Corner Stone
@Emerald: Not to be too harsh about it, but that’s pure poppycock. There is nothing those backwoods hillbillies could have done to change the Village narrative or attitude.
If they held BBQ’s? They better not dare try serving them on plastic plates! And if they are served on the best china? Look at how uppity these hillbillies are getting above their station! It wouldn’t matter what they did as long as it wasn’t resign and flee in disgrace.
JPL
@jimmiraybob: Don’t give Lindsay any ideas, since he already wants to take out world leaders.
clay
@Jager:
Lemme guess: Deep State, Hillary, witch hunt
NotMax
OT.
10:30 a.m. – first rains from extreme weather preceding of Olivia. Peeked outside and can’t see down to the ocean, everything is socked in within what looks like gray gauze. Expect this bit will pass by quickly.
Emerald
@Corner Stone: Actually you have a point there. I recall the punditry at the time lamenting that the Clintons wouldn’t schmooze with the Beltway crowd. Must have internalized it.
Yeah. Tumbrels are needed.
trollhattan
@Jager:
Charlie Pierce calls it Republican prion disease, which I find to be both a perfect explanation and all the evidence we need to conclude it’s not reversible nor treatable. They are who they are because they wanted to be led down that dark path.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Emerald:
It would have only worked if they had a tire swing.
trollhattan
Speaking of politics, the complicated tale of state senate candidate Julia Sanchez strikes me as uniquely New Yorkish. Glad I don’t have to sift through all that just to pick a candidate.
Jager
@clay:
Sure, all of those and more, her two fallbacks are, “Don’t you have any respect for the presidency?” and “Everybody is just out to get him.”
Mandalay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I think you are right, but it’s not Woodward’s fault if some peon in the Trump Administration feeds him malicious bullshit. Woodward’s job is only to relay what insiders have told him, and while he may frame things for dubious reasons (e.g. glossing over Porter’s violent streak), there is no reason to believe he made anything up.
And all the money quotes in the book were also recorded, so anyone who is reckless enough to go legal on Bob’s ass is going to lose very badly.
debit
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Yep. Remember how the Obama’s tried having a cocktail party once a week and invited Republicans who boasted about shunning them?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Jager: Of course it’s a Witch Hunt, cause there be witches there.
Dorothy A. Winsor
On Morning Joe they were talking about how we needed to come together as a country and not be divided and it should be like after 9/11. Horse hooey. This is like Obama should have had a beer with Mitch McConnell. I am not coming together with racists and xenophobes and misogynists.
TenguPhule
@Emerald:
No, they couldn’t.
They weren’t born to the right class.
They had the audacity to work for their money.
hitchhiker
In the last chapter you get the spectacle of 77-yr-old Roman Catholic former US Marine John Dowd telling Trump that he loves him … in spite of the fact that he believes Trump is a “f*&cking liar.”
Dowd, who was obvsly the source for much of the stuff in that chapter, tells Woodward that it’s possible he himself got played by Bob Mueller. Dowd apparently believed from the jump that Trump had definitely NOT conspired with any Russians or done anything remotely illegal. He thought that by handing over all those docs and sending all those people over to testify willingly, he’d be able to know that Mueller (thus fully informed) would come to the same conclusion.
Instead, Mueller just kept asking to talk to Trump. And so Dowd was left wondering … did Mueller actually have something on Trump from Flynn or someone else who flipped? Did Mueller use Dowd’s cooperative stance to build out his case while pretending to just be doing his due diligence?
In Dowd’s telling to Woodward, right up until he quit last March he was convinced that Trump had done nothing wrong, and that it would be stupid to let Mueller trap him — a thing easily done b/c Trump was such a f&cking liar. He quit, according to him, b/c Trump would not take his advice.
But Mueller’s insistence made him wonder …
I can’t help reading this and thinking of how deep up his own ass Dowd managed to get when it came to Trump. Every incentive and instinct should have told him — a supposedly disciplined and religious man — to stay away. And he ignored it all because, IMO, of his distrust of and contempt for the other side. For people like you and me.
Screw him. The coming catastrophe will be his legacy.
TenguPhule
@?BillinGlendaleCA: More like a Paedo hunt. And we know there be a lot of them there because every accusation was a confession.
TenguPhule
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
We can unite over tumbrels sending the Trumps and Kochs to the gallows.
JPL
@NotMax: The oceans are angry. There is also a disturbance in the gulf of Mexico that is suppose to become a tropical depression tonight.
Duane
@JWL: Graham needs a Missouri boat ride.
Dorothy A. Winsor
The country is divided because a big portion of it has followed a crazy man back to the land of White Male Supremacy. Until they repent, I want nothing to do with them.
trollhattan
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
A witch hunt at a witches’ convention usually turns up witches. Trump loves him some witches.
Major Major Major Major
@NotMax: stay safe!
Elizabelle
@trollhattan: I would not vote for Julia Sanchez. Not truthful enough, and it’s not like there’s not already a Democratic incumbent.
What a poseur. When your own family is fact checking you …
I find it interesting that we have fakers mostly on the Republican side (that dreadful Florida woman with the self-manufactured college degree) and now among Bernistas. Hmmm.
trollhattan
@JPL:
Evidently there’s potential for Florence to pull Issac into the same region in one of the simulations.
Are we ready for this mess?
AThornton
The only book I care about are the odds the Republicans are going down in flames on November 6th and losing control of Congress.
Elizabelle
@Elizabelle: Forgive me, it’s Julia Salazar, not Sanchez.
I think her name might one of the few authentic facts about her, but haven’t read this latest article yet …
Jager
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
She’s not the worst, my other sister’s 2nd husband is a full on RWNJ who has moved from Rush and Fox to Alex Jones. This guy is so bad my younger sister said she wanted to “kick him in the nuts” at a family picnic a month ago. He is so stupid he was surprised the Mexican-American contractor who painted his house had a website and a cell phone. He only hired the guy because one of his RWNJ buddies told him Ramon was “one of the good ones”.
SFAW
@Jager:
To which you might consider responding “Oh, Auntie, you are SUCH a kidder!! The only people who believe that stuff are the nutcases and morons who believe that the entire government is run by lizard people masquerading as humans, or that Neil Armstrong’s walk on the Moon was faked. And I know that YOU are not like that.”
She’ll either have a stroke, or she’ll be so pissed she never speaks to you again, so I see it as a win-win-win scenario. [Notice that I didn’t provide a third option, i.e.,that she realizes she’s been behaving like a fool, and returns to sanity.]
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Obama kind of went there too, towards the end of his speech. I just kept saying to the screen, “you’re a very nice guy”. The thing is, I believe he can do what he says we should do, try to find the thread of common values with the wingnuttiest, and be willing to talk to them.
But he’s a better man than me, and than most of the males in this country. I can’t find that thread of common values with those people. I’m not to the point where I comprehend our Civil War yet and the willingness to shoot at your fellow citizens. But I’m not willing or able to talk to them or hear them talk.
Amir Khalid
@Jager:
Do share.
Mandalay
@jimmiraybob:
Taking something off his desk might get you fired. Slipping something onto his desk for him to sign could put you behind bars.
Elizabelle
Bob Woodward is not the Savior of the Republic.
He is one of the gatekeepers with the Villagers. When they start writing about “hey, was the 2016 election legitimate?”, then I might care about their output. As it is, they just want to reward another Republican with a stolen presidency. (Along with two stolen Supreme Court seats.)
Burn them. (FWIW, Woodward is coming to Richmond in a few weeks, and they had to move his appearance to a larger venue.)
TenguPhule
@Mandalay:
You seem to think anyone in Trump’s orbit actually thinks or cares about consequences.
TenguPhule
@Elizabelle:
Gonna need more Kerosene.
SFAW
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
I also believe he would. But I also believe he would get the same response from them that Sheriff Bart got from the old lady, when he said ” Mornin’, ma’am. And isn’t it a lovely mornin’? “
rikyrah
P. Gabrielle Foreman (@profgabrielle) Tweeted:
Evelyn Higginbotham becomes the 1st (!) Black chair of History at Harvard.
“I am chair of the department from which W.E.B. Du Bois received his PhD in 1895” and Carter G. Woodson received his PhD in 1912. #Blktwitterstorians #twitterstorians https://t.co/wBlfeIVpwt https://twitter.com/profgabrielle/status/1039490255261499392?s=17
balconesfault
@jimmiraybob: Don’t need to serriptiously slip things onto Trumps desk. He likes signing whatever the wingnuts put in front of him.
Elizabelle
@rikyrah: That’s wonderful. I am surprised that it took that long, though.
TenguPhule
Trump administration to triple size of Texas tent camp for migrant children
it just never stops.
TenguPhule
@TenguPhule: Also, how the hell do you make a canvas tent “climate controlled” in Texas?
Amir Khalid
@TenguPhule:
I’m surprised you didn’t draw the obvious dark conclusion: they won’t. They’ll just lie about it.
WaterGirl
@trollhattan: I think the answer to your question depends on whether white people are impacted or people of color.
I am not kidding.
mozzerb
@TenguPhule: Nobody said what kind of climate they were talking about.
JPL
@Amir Khalid: Trump’s reaction to Puerto Rico was an “unsung success.” Of course, it sucks to be those 3000 folks that died.
Amir Khalid
@JPL:
Trump only cares about his trip there, and he considers that a success. The three thousand dead people, not so much.
MattF
I’m not a Woodward fan. His job, his mission– is to ease the conscience of the guilty and persuade people to look away from the damage that’s already done, because… “Well, what else could I do??” It’s not good enough.
Elizabelle
@MattF: Well said. Agree completely.
Woodward’s reporting would be useful if it came out earlier, during the course of his fact-gathering. You know, like actual “reporting.”
But no. He monetizes it. The damage is done, but he’s elite enough it does not touch him.
Zinsky
As Thom Hartman has so eloquently pointed out – there is a prescribed Constitutional remedy for a president who is unfit to serve – it’s called the 25th Amendment. Not a group of self-righteous zealots who are fine with a degenerate lunatic running the levers of power as long as they get their Randian tax cuts and Trump finishes destroying the last shreds of our social safety net.
Duane
@JPL: Trump spoke about hurricane Florence today. Puerto Rico was brought up. He repeatedly referred to the response as a success. Reporters asked about the death toll, which he ignored. A tenuous factual basis indeed. We need the truth about Puerto Rico’s response, not what that delusional moron thinks.
lamh36
I have officially checked into my flight for London tomorrow!!!!
And…
my school fee bill was $300 less than I thought it would be, so that means I’ve got $300 more to add to my London spending budget!!!
rikyrah
Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) Tweeted:
Woodward’s book also reveals Trump’s endless lying, his seething contempt for process, and his bottomless bad faith in developing rationales for big decisions.
I dug out some important additional revelations that illustrate this point well.
My new post:
https://t.co/cJIRWZ2RTq https://twitter.com/ThePlumLineGS/status/1039509816765440000?s=17
lamh36
@lamh36: that extra is gonna be great to used to get back and forth from Heathrow!
MattF
@Elizabelle: Still interested in SPX? How about anyone interested amassing at White Flint, around 11 am Saturday?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Zinsky: True, but the 25th would require 2/3’s of Congress to go along with the VP and Cabinet; Impeachment would be an easier lift.
Tenar Arha
@trollhattan: @Elizabelle: I don’t know about her history, but like so many, she’s got corroboration about the guy she named as her assaulter. Per the reporter Shayndi Raice at WSJ
Elizabelle
@MattF: Starting to think I won’t make the trip. Didn’t make hotel reservations (I understand the Marriott is under renovation and didn’t have as many rooms as usual available).
Might start keeping an eye on accommodations. Wondering if I am up against coastal refugees this weekend too …
Dang! Situation could change, but idea is on the downside for this year ….
?BillinGlendaleCA
@lamh36: We took a bus tour out of London to Salisbury, Stonehenge and Bath, wasn’t too pricey and was a fun day trip. Good to see a bit of the countryside.
Kraux Pas
Hey, OT obviously, but what happened to the site? I can only access from school or from home via a proxy server.
Ang
One thing I didn’t see mentioned in the hurricane prep thread – 5 gallon buckets, like those orange ‘Homer’ buckets from home depot. Inexpensive, holds extra water (fill them when you fill the tub), use them to force flush the toilet if the city water system is down.
montanareddog
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
And a fourth source – an “obvious anagram”, reportedly.
rikyrah
@MattF:
???
On point
Elizabelle
@MattF: You brought me luck! I found a very nice hotel nearby for Friday and Saturday nights, and I can just stash the car at the White Flint Mall and walk over. Haven’t been up to DC area for a while, and why not?
I am confirmed! We will meet up on Saturday! COME ON JACKALS; LET’S DO A MEETUP this weekend!
Look forward to seeing derf again. Got his Dahmer book for my nephew last time he was at SPX; gonna buy one for myself this time.
MattF
@Elizabelle: Still ‘likely’ for me. Unknown issue is that I have a test for circulation in my left leg on Thursday morning, and my active imagination is suggesting that the test could affect my mobility. But we’ll see.
lamh36
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Yep…found a Groupon for a day tour for Bath & Stonehenge so that’s the agenda
Elizabelle
@Tenar Arha: Julia Salazar has fabricated her past. That puts her on the “do not vote for, and do not support” list for me. You don’t vote for a known serlal liar in the age of Trump.
If she’s had a sexual assault, that’s terrible, but it’s just — perhaps — a fact about Julia Salazar that can actually be proven.
Kay
I didn’t read the book (of course) but I read that Woodward downplays Russian interference in the election.
I think that’s the dominant media take on it- they simply don’t believe it had any effect. They didn’t pursue it before the election because they didn’t think it mattered. They still don’t think it matters.
I wonder how this belief they held and hold influenced the coverage. I think it explains some of the wackily excessive coverage of the emails.
Elizabelle
@MattF: I hope it works out! I will send you an email via Anne Laurie.
I’d suggest people meet up in the Marriott Hotel lobby, especially if it happens to be raining that Saturday. There’s a Starbucks, and a nice bar. If it’s not raining, there is a terrace outside off the SPX registration area that’s a good place to sun and surf and wait.
Elizabelle
@Kay: Aren’t THEY gonna be surprised?
Asshats.
Kay
I have to say too I really can’t stand Woodward. I think the ultra-sophisticated insider thing repels voters, and makes them want to treat this all as elite gameplaying that they have no real role in.
He depresses me. I’ve gotten so I avoid this variety of “coverage” because if I see too much of it I want to give up on the whole mess and just tune out.
TenguPhule
@Kay:
They will continue to deny it right up to the point they’re in the showers and suddenly notice there’s no water coming out.
MattF
@Elizabelle: It’s a plan!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay: he was one of the prime movers of the great “Why can’t President Obama have Mitch McConnell over for a drink and settle all this stuff?” Nonsense of IIRC the spring/summer of ’13. He cited Newt Gingrich as an authority on the need for comity and communication. He’s a moron.
Chyron HR
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Fixating on (((Goldman Sachs))) (((investment bankers))) is so 2016.
satby
@NotMax: hope you can ride it out without too much trouble.
Duane
@TenguPhule: Hard to get a person to admit they’re wrong when their livelihood denpends on being right.
ruemara
@lamh36: London!? Congrats on both successes. Can’t wait to hear about everything you’re up to across the pond.
stinger
@lamh36: Wow! Have fun!
SWMBO
@Ang: If the city pumps for water or sewer are down, it will back up into your house. Yes to the extra water but get garbage bags and bleach just in case.
stinger
@rikyrah: I generally like Greg Sargent, but I don’t get the “additional revelations” bit. The Woodward quotes in Sargent’s Twitter blog — “They’re in violation”, the Sessions recusal — are things I’ve known for ages. They’re not new information. If I know them (without reading the Woodward book), why doesn’t Sargent?
Uncle Cosmo
@Mandalay: More to the point, if something’s taken off his desk before he has a chance to sign it, he might forget he asked for it; if something’s put on his desk for him to sign, he might read it first – & then explode because it’s not what he asked for &/or he doesn’t understand it.
H.E.Wolf
@TenguPhule:
It’s the High Holy Days. (Shanah Tovah to all who are observing them!) So maybe not the best time for a Holocaust ‘joke’?
Although I know you didn’t do it deliberately to cause pain, I’m probably not the only reader here who had relatives killed by the Nazis….
Uncle Cosmo
@lamh36: One last bit of advice: If you go to the Globe Theatre as a groundling, wear very comfortable shoes & if possible take something with some padding you can sit crosslegged on during intermission – the surface is concrete & standing on it for several hrs will do a number on your legs. A light sweater in a transparent plastic bag, e.g. Now go have fun!
TenguPhule
@H.E.Wolf: Sorry, I figured referring to getting shot might be interpreted wrong.
laura
@lamh36: you’re going to have a great trip! What a year and change you’ve had, what with the traveling and grad school and new family addition and Ms. Jackson. Can’t wait to read your posts while abroad.
If you really want to get revved up, 84 Charing Cross Road is a nice little gem.
Look three ways before you cross the street!