Review of Bob Woodward's 'Rage': On the Record, Such as It Is

These presidential reflections are helpfully related in the prologue, on pages xviii and xix, presumably in order to allow reporters at the nation’s largest news organizations to announce the book’s big reveal without having to read its 400 pages. A few hours after I received my copy, news websites were ablaze with headlines announcing newfound evidence of Mr. Trump’s perfidy. That he knew the virus was “deadly” but continued to “play it down” makes him, according to a certain kind of media personality, uniquely responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans. 

Mr. Trump’s logorrhea is a problem as always, but the idea that he “knew” the truth about the virus and misled Americans is stupid. It assumes that any early acknowledgment of the virus’s “deadliness” must have entailed a clear and agreed-upon set of policies. If Mr. Trump believed on Feb. 7 that the virus was “deadly,” in this reading, he should have come out gung-ho for an array of mitigating measures, perhaps including a nationwide lockdown. But not even the now-lauded public-health experts were calling for major behavioral changes in February. On Feb. 29, three weeks  after  Mr. Trump’s “deadly” remark to Mr. Woodward, Anthony Fauci himself stated on the Today show that “at this moment, there’s no need to change anything that you’re doing on a day-by-day basis . . . the risk is still low”; and on that same day CDC director Robert Redfield told reporters that “the risk is low. We need to go on with our normal lives.” Both statements are included in Mr. Woodward’s book, but you don’t get to them until pages 254 and 255.

I mention all this simply to point out that the book’s one headline-making revelation is noteworthy only if you already believe that any terrible thing in the world is probably in some way the fault of Mr. Trump. But if that is your outlook, you don’t need a hefty book to tell you that Mr. Trump is a terrible guy. What is the point of “Rage,” then? The typical Woodward account, based on the author’s interviews with top decision makers, tells the story of a tense year or two in the White House. This one, building on “Fear” (2018), the author’s account of Mr. Trump’s chaotic first year in office, purports to show that this capricious and unprincipled real-estate mogul is incapable of handling a crisis of the sort that now confronts America.

Donald Trump and Bob Woodward talk in the Oval Office on Dec. 5, 2019.

PHOTO:   OFFICIAL WHITE HOUSE PHOTO/SHEALAH CRAIGHEAD

I confess I have always liked Mr. Woodward’s White House chronicles. High-ranking officials of both parties are apt to blab to him, mostly I suspect because he allows them to speak without attribution. I find it easy to ignore the author’s consensus-liberal interpretations of events and enjoy the books for what they are: aggrieved cabinet officials and senior White House staffers anonymously grousing about each other and portraying themselves as martyrs. 

There is some of this in “Rage,” but not enough. And the sources rarely reveal anything worth knowing. Former secretary of defense Jim Mattis is evidently a source; from him we learn that Mr. Trump treats senior staff abominably and doesn’t understand the importance of international allies. Who knew? We learn from former director of national intelligence Dan Coats, also clearly a source, that Mr. Trump’s constant changes of mind very nearly drove Mr. Coats insane. Mildly interesting, but hardly news. Mr. Coats, we’re also told, thought for a time that Mr. Trump might indeed be in cahoots with the Russians; the intel chief and his staff “examined the intelligence as carefully as possible” and found nothing. I can think of some people who would call that a revelation, but I am not one of them. 

What ruins the book—what makes it one long retelling of what everybody already knows—is the presence, on the record, of the president of the United States. Mr. Woodward interviewed Mr. Trump 17 times for the book. This contrasts with the author’s previous White House books. Those other works, whatever their flaws, have an attractive off-the-record, I-shouldn’t-be-telling-you-this feel about them. Mr. Woodward interviewed President Obama for “Obama’s Wars” (2010), but only once, and the chief’s presence in that book is fleeting. In long passages of “Rage,” by contrast, you feel you’re getting more of what you already had too much of. Mr. Woodward puts questions to Mr. Trump and Mr. Trump responds with answers that are by turns hyperbolic or factually wrong or irrelevant. As usual, he refuses to play by the rules set for him by his questioner.

The effect is unbearably boring, like reading transcripts of White House press briefings. At one point Mr. Woodward tries—rather too obviously, if you ask me—to bait Mr. Trump into saying something racially insensitive. The president remarks, “I’ve done more for the Black community than any president in history with the possible exception of Lincoln.” Mr. Woodward: “He had said so publicly at least five times by that point in 2020 alone.” OK—but if he had said this publicly so often, why are we hearing about it in a Bob Woodward book?

A number of commentators, particularly those sympathetic to Mr. Trump, have wondered why he agreed to speak to Mr. Woodward, whose account was certain to damage the president in an election year. I don’t know, but it looks like a savvy move to me: By the simple expedient of making himself lavishly available, Mr. Trump has turned what might have been an engaging book into a dud.

Mr. Swaim is an editorial-page writer for the Journal.