"I bring rage out. I do bring rage out. I always have. I don’t know if that’s an asset or a liability, but whatever it is, I do.” Presidential candidate Donald J. Trump in an interview with Bob Woodward and Robert Costa on March 31, 2016, at the Old Post Office Pavilion, Trump International Hotel, Washington, D.C.
“I wanted to always play it down,” Trump told me. “I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.”
Woodward covers the discussions held between he and Bob Woodward in this book. Bob often pointing out or discussing his concern about not sharing with the people...to little avail.
“And I think he’s going to have it in good shape,” Trump said, “but you know, it’s a very tricky situation.” What made it “tricky”? “It goes through air,” Trump said. “That’s always tougher than the touch. You don’t have to touch things. Right? But the air, you just breathe the air and that’s how it’s passed. And so that’s a very tricky one. That’s a very delicate one. It’s also more deadly than even your strenuous flus.” “Deadly” was a very strong word. Something was obviously going on here that I was not focused on. Over the next month I would make trips to Florida and the West Coast, oblivious to the mounting pandemic.
While discussing Fear on television, I was asked for my bottom-line summary of Trump’s leadership. “Let’s hope to God we don’t have a crisis,” I said.
And so it was that Bob Woodward, along with most of America, had no idea it was "deadly..." Indeed he has not been willing to speak of this even though the book has been out and thousands have died and millions have been infected in the States...
Much of the book includes interviews with Tillerson, Mattis, Comey, Sessions, Rosenstein, and other individuals no longer in the administration. They were candid and informative, some of which we had known about but details were important. I had garnered most of the topics covered in this book from my almost obsessive news watching during that time period. Nevertheless there was many background details that I used to fill in earlier accounts which provided a sometimes new perspective. For me, this was well worth reading and I can highly recommend to others interested in this extraordinary administration...
Of the four books, in addition to the one by Mary Trump, I found the book by Michael Cohen to be the most readable and, in turn, the most heartwarming... Once again, most of what was included had been covered on the news. However, I found the personal perspective of this true story, this memoir, the most telling. The most sympathetic. For instance, Michael shared that none of his family were happy with his working for Donald Trump and were constantly trying to get him to quit or, at least, not be at his beck and call constantly...
Donald Trump’s seduction began the way it would continue for years, with flattery, proximity to celebrity and power, and my own out-of-control ambitions and desires. For me, it started on a nondescript day in the fall of 2006. At the time, I was a successful, if little-known, middle-aged midtown Manhattan attorney and businessman on the make, sitting in a tidy nondescript office with two of everything arranged before me on my desk, a function of my obsessive nature: two staplers, two tape dispensers, two phones, two cups with sharpened pencils. I was thirty-nine and I worked for the mid-sized white-shoe law firm Phillips Nizer. As a lawyer I’d long had a busy practice in personal injury and medical malpractice, but my real passion and talent was in dealmaking, and I had accumulated a multi-million dollar fortune in the rough-and-tumble taxi medallion industry. Wealthy, with a beautiful wife and two healthy, happy young children, I had just purchased an apartment in the Trump Park Avenue building for $4.9 million and I tooled around the city in a Bentley and considered myself semi-retired. I had it made, in other words, but I didn’t know that I was on the precipice of a mid-life crisis that would lead to an all-consuming fixation and my downfall.
Michael willingly shares how he was pulled into the seduction. I found myself comparing him to the many who have become followers and members of the cult in which he surrounds his loyalists... The Power, the celebrity... It was not something that had ever interested me, but I found a certain empathy for Michael and other followers... Michael was willing and able to do anything for Donald. One thing he pointed out in the book and on television is that Donald rarely actually says "Do this" or "Do that." What he does is create scenarios where if you wish to follow him, you must accept as truth, no matter how wrong... Unfortunately, we have all seen in during the last four years.
Ultimately, something happens that forces the follower to begin to question. This exploration of what happened for Michael is poignant. When that happened, Michael was able to see the lawlessness of his actions and the manipulation used to have him, essentially, leave his family and choose his boss, as the primary person in his life. Thank God that he was able to pull away from this cult and return to his family...and to paying the price, legally, for all that he had done for his boss. If you have a need to learn how to pull yourself out of a destructive relationship, I can highly recommend this as an illustration of how you go where you are and how to find yourself again...
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