Bob Woodward’s second book on the Trump White House has a title, Rage, and promises to exchange the secrets of ’25 personal letters between [Donald] “Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un have not been public before.”
In the letters, according to details of Simon & Schuster published on the book’s Amazon page on Wednesday night, “Kim describes the bond between the two leaders as from a ‘fantasy movie’, because the two leaders participated in a extraordinary diplomatic minute “.
Rage, the sequel to Fear, airs on September 15, wrapping Trump’s face in extreme close-up.
Simon & Schuster promised “an unusual and intimate tour de force of original reporting on the Trump presidency … with wonderful new details about early national decisions and operations on national security and the steps of Trump, as he faces a global pandemic,” economic disaster and racial unrest “.
Woodward, 77, and a veteran Washington Post reporter, made his name with Carl Bernstein in the early 1970s by exposing the Watergate scandal that brought Richard Nixon down.
Fear came out in September 2018 and tops bestseller lists. Based on hundreds of interviews with administration officials, it included memorable scenes, including seniors removing papers from the 45th president’s office, that he would not pursue extreme policies there.
One such incident involved economic adviser Gary Cohn withdrawing the proposal from a trade agreement with South Korea, a US ally. Trump’s involvement with the totalitarian state to the north has produced three meetings with Kim and exchange of friendly words, but no deal on denuclearization and other concerns.
Woodward did not interview Trump for Fear, which the president called “a piece of fiction” by a “liar” with “false sources.” But in January this year, President Fox News reported that the two men had spoken.
“I was interviewed by a very, very good writer, reporter,” Trump said. ‘I can tell Bob Woodward. He said he was doing something and this time I said, ‘Maybe I’ll sit down.’ ‘
Trump spoke reportedly more than once with Woodward and told senior staff to cooperate. According to the publisher, “what is not known is that Trump Woodward provided a window into his mind through a series of exclusive interviews.
“At key decision points, Rage shows how Trump’s responses to the 2020 crisis were rooted in the instincts, habits and style he developed during his first three years as president.
“Rage draws from hundreds of hours of interviews with first-hand witnesses, such as notes, emails, diaries, diaries, calendars and confidential documents of participants.”
Woodward told the Guardian about Fear, saying he was dedicated to reporting “what really happened” and said, “Too many people have lost their perspective and become emotionally unhinged about Trump.”
‘I look at my job,’ he said, ‘as: let us present the rock-solid proof of what is happening. There are documents, there are notes, there is not only the sentence, but there is where they sat and they met and this is what happened. Let the political system respond. ”
One subsequent political reaction to Trump put him in the situation that Nixon dismissed to avoid: an imposition test in the Senate, after House Democrats criticized Trump’s attempts to supply Ukraine with filth to political rivals.
Trump was released after only one Republican, the Utah senator and president-nominated Mitt Romney in 2012, voted to remove him from office.
Since the publication of Fire and Fury by Michael Wolff, details of which were first revealed by the Guardian in January 2018, books about Trump and his presidency have been big business. Most recently, former National Security Adviser John Bolton and Mary L Trump, niece of Trump, have published direct bestsellers.
As Trump approaches his re-election campaign against Joe Biden – and as the president tries to undermine the integrity of those elections, which will take place during a coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than 165,000 people in America – Woodward’s new book awaits waited.
The title may have derived from a conversation Woodward had with Trump – and Bob Costa of the Washington Post – at Trump’s hotel in Washington on March 31, 2016.
In response to Woodward’s assertion that the Republican Party had become home to “a lot of fear and anger and fear”, the then candidate for the party’s presidential nomination said: “I bring out anger. I bring out anger. I always.I think it was … I do not know if that’s an asset or a liability, but whatever it is, I do.
‘I also end up bringing out great unity. I have had many occasions like this where people hate me more than any person they have ever met. And after it’s all over, they become my friends. And I see that happening here. ”
Four years later, with America divided like never before, that does not seem likely. The final lines of his latest book may be pulling in the minds of many readers.
John Dowd, a lawyer who worked for the president during the Mueller investigation into Russian election interference and ties between the Trump campaign and Moscow, was one of Woodward’s sources.
“In the man and his presidency, Dowd had seen the tragic mistake,” Woodward wrote.
“In the political back and forth, the evasions, the denials, the tweeting, the hiding, screaming ‘Fake News’, the outrage, Trump had one terrible problem that Dowd knew but could not bring himself to say to the president: “You’re a fine liar.” ”
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