The Hoax, Lies, Realities and RAGE

Posted on by alexesguerra

Bob Woodward’s new book, Rage, is an unprecedented and intimate tour de force of new reporting on the Trump presidency facing a global pandemic, economic disaster and racial unrest.

RAGE
Rage

Woodward, the #1 international bestselling author of Fear: Trump in the White House, has uncovered the precise moment the president was warned that the Covid-19 epidemic would be the biggest national security threat to his presidency. In dramatic detail, Woodward takes readers into the Oval Office as Trump’s head pops up when he is told in January 2020 that the pandemic could reach the scale of the 1918 Spanish Flu that killed 675,000 Americans.

In 17 on-the-record interviews with Woodward over seven volatile months—an utterly vivid window into Trump’s mind—the president provides a self-portrait that is part denial and part combative interchange mixed with surprising moments of doubt as he glimpses the perils in the presidency and what he calls the “dynamite behind every door.”

At key decision points, Rage shows how Trump’s responses to the crises of 2020 were rooted in the instincts, habits and style he developed during his first three years as president.

Revisiting the earliest days of the Trump presidency, Rage reveals how Secretary of Defense James Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats struggled to keep the country safe as the president dismantled any semblance of collegial national security decision making.

Rage draws from hundreds of hours of interviews with firsthand witnesses as well as participants’ notes, emails, diaries, calendars and confidential documents.

Woodward obtained 25 never-seen personal letters exchanged between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who describes the bond between the two leaders as out of a “fantasy film.”

Trump insists to Woodward he will triumph over Covid-19 and the economic calamity. “Don’t worry about it, Bob. Okay?” Trump told the author in July. “Don’t worry about it. We’ll get to do another book. You’ll find I was right.”

Review

“Woodward has established himself as the best reporter of our time. He may be the best reporter of all time.” —Bob Schieffer, CBS News (2004)

In listing the all-time 100 best nonfiction books, Time magazine called All the President’s Men, the 1974 book by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, “Perhaps the most influential piece of journalism in history.”

“He has an extraordinary ability to get otherwise responsible adults to spill [their] guts to him . . . his ability to get people to talk about stuff they shouldn’t be talking about is just extraordinary and may be unique.” —Robert Gates, former director of the CIA and Secretary of Defense (2014)

“[Fear] is a remarkable feat of reporting. . . . There’s nothing comparable in American journalism, except maybe Woodward’s The Final Days (1976), co-written with Carl Bernstein, about the downfall of Richard Nixon.” —George Packer, The New Yorker (2018)

About the Author

Bob Woodward is an associate editor at The Washington Post where he has worked for 49 years and reported on every American president from Nixon to Trump. He has shared in two Pulitzer Prizes, first for the Post’s coverage of the Watergate scandal with Carl Bernstein, and second 20 years later as the lead Post reporter for coverage of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Woodward recalled how much of the most important Post reporting on Watergate was published in September and October 1972. Nixon promptly went out and got re-elected, claiming victory in 49 of the 50 states.

As for how America will fare on and after Nov. 3, Woodward knows it will be less clear-cut.

Having allowed Trump to defame and disqualify himself, Woodward concludes that he is the wrong man for the job of president; I’d add that someone so thoughtless, so unfeeling and so orange-tinted hardly qualifies for membership of the human race. And come to think of it, my opening premise is an insult to the brave, fond, ever-faithful canine species.

Becoming Ranks as 2018’s Bestseller

Posted on by alexesguerra

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Former First Lady and Author, Michelle LaVaughn Robinson, girl of the South Side’s splendid memoir touches on a variety of issues beset by the First Black President and First Lady of the United States.  Her specific burden was such: A black woman campaigning alongside the first black man to secure a Democratic major-party  nomination for the presidency, she was unwavering in her support—and in her countenance—partly because she had no choice.

The jagged and derailed terrain of American politics with the added threat of American racism hanging over the Obama’s  is a punishingly Herculean task. It requires an uncommon resolve. It’s not surprising that Michelle Obama would have felt overwhelmed by the unrelenting negativity hurled at her and her daughters during her husband’s campaigns and presidency. The book, as titled Becoming, offers a sometimes surprisingly intimate look at the life of the former first lady, born Michelle LaVaughn Robinson. Beginning with her childhood years and ending with reflections on the current administration, Becoming covers Obama’s transformation from a young overachiever on the South Side of Chicago to one of the most formidable political figures in recent history.

Michelle Obama had not, however, condemned the current administration wholeheartedly prior to Becoming’s release. Her rebukes of Donald Trump’s agenda begin with his suggestion that Barack Obama was not a U.S. citizen, which Michelle Obama says in the book put her family at risk. This was partly on the credence perpetuated against her husband that questioned the Obamas’ Americanness and humanity. Although the current 45th President no longer mention’s his predecessor’s being born as a US Citizen, he continues to attack Barack Obama as an excused to blame for his own incompetence. His main goal is to completely repeal all Obama’s executive actions and legacy. An area of discussion which could also lead to Donald Trump’s defeat for a second term and be on the list as a one term President.

“Becoming is still a political memoir; it functions partly to solidify Barack Obama’s legacy as a complex and multilayered milestone for the country. The book makes the case for the Obama family as definitively American, for Michelle Obama’s concerns as worries that derive from the universal anxieties of marriage and motherhood. Still, Becoming is satisfying for the quiet moments in which Mrs. Obama, the woman who supported a black man named Barack all the way to the presidency, gets to let down her hair and breathe as Michelle LaVaughn Robinson, girl of the South Side”. quoted from HANNAH GIORGIS of the Atlantic.com.

In her memoir, a work of recollection and storytelling, Michelle Obama invites readers into her own world, chronicling the experiences that have shaped her—from her childhood on the South Side of Chicago to her years as an executive balancing the demands of motherhood and work, to her time spent at the world’s most famous address. With unerring honesty and lively wit, she describes her triumphs and her disappointments, both public and private, telling her full story as she has lived it—in her own words and on her own terms.

In finally telling her story on Becoming, the Former First Lady is doing several things with this book. She is taking the country by the hand on an city and state tour of everyday African-American life and ambition, while recounting her rise from modest origins to the closest this country has to nobility. She’s meditating on the tensions women face in a world that speaks of gender equality but in which women still bear the greater burdens of balancing career and family, even with a forward-thinking husband like Barack Obama. And she is reminding readers that African-Americans, like any other group, experience the heartbreak of infertility, as she describes the challenges she and her husband confronted in order to become parents.

This is the reason why this book, “Becoming” has earned to be the Top Bestselling Book for 2018.