An Outrageous President

 

 

I’ll begin this brief take on Bob Woodward’s book “RAGE” with the last sentence of his epilogue: “When his performance as president is taken in its entirety, I can only reach one conclusion: Trump is the wrong man for the job.”

His word “wrong” is wrong. But I don’t think there’s a single adjective that would be right. Saying Trump is wrong is like saying Willie Sutton was wrong to rob banks. It’s true, of course, but “wrong” is inadequate both for Sutton and for Trump.

The extensive quotations in the book — all recorded with Trump’s approval during 17 interviews — reveal a man who is incoherent, paranoid, vengeful, contradictory and deceitful. I guess you could say he really is the wrong man for the job.

Most of those adjectives we’ve already experienced during Trump’s nearly four years in office, but the odd thing about him that we never saw was his attitude toward Woodward and the book he was going to write. Trump knew it wasn’t going to be positive, but he not only welcomed Woodward into the Oval Office, with the recorder on the desk between them, he called Woodward at home many times during all hours of the day, and talked incessantly! And this after Woodward had written an earlier book about him, “FEAR,” which he reviled!

The book gave me the impression that Trump considered Woodward an alternative to a psychiatrist. All his character flaws were poured out during those interviews. And the other thing that became clear — although I had suspected it before I read the book — that despite his stated negativity toward the media, with its “Fake news,” he has a love-hate relationship with it. It reminded me of that comment, “There’s no such thing as bad publicity.” He knows that the more he vilifies the media the more they’ll cover him. His narcissism is of such a degree that only his name and his face matter, however negative the words printed or spoken.

As bad and dangerous a president as Trump is, the unwavering support he receives from white supremacist, neo-Nazi groups, and the misguided support he gets from good people, are most frightening.

I hope he recovers from the coronavirus he contracted — most likely out of carelessness related to his politically-motivated cavalier attitude toward it. But comes Nov. 3, assuming he doesn’t succumb to the virus, he must be defeated at the polls. Typically, he will call the results fraudulent. But, as I said in a previous blog, the margin of his defeat must be wide enough so that he will lose the aid he would need to subvert the results.