Book: Rage
Author: Bob Woodward,
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Price: Rs 899

“I wanted to always play it down” — Donald Trump’s egregious admission on his response to the threat posed by Covid-19 to a nation that has, some allege on account of this presidential sleight-of-hand, lost over two lakh lives would perhaps grant Bob Woodward’s account literary immortality. Rage begins with Trump’s “head popp[ing] up” to the national security advisor’s warning that “This [Covid-19] will be the biggest national security threat you face in your presidency,” and then takes a rather circuitous route to return to the raging pandemic, documenting, painstakingly, the litany of errors in judgment committed by a man who, Woodward admits in the epilogue, is unfit for the top job.

Woodward’s expansive detour — “How did it begin?” — is necessary to spot the signs of trouble that America and the world missed. Trump’s unorthodox style of appointing aides — “overconfident idiots” in the words of Jared Kushner — and their dismissal when they chose not to comply with the Trumpian fantasy — Dan Coats, the former Director of National Intelligence, was told that he had been fired while he was playing golf — are testaments to the risks of putting a maverick inside the White House. Trump’s insensitivity to his aides even makes the head of ExxonMobil appear likeable — almost. Golf, evidently, is portentous for stability. Trump ordered the assassination of Qasem Soleimani while teeing.

Rage by Bob Woodward, Simon & Schuster, Rs 899 Amazon

Yet, policy howlers — Covid, China, Iran and North Korea — are not enough to comprehend the quixotic architecture of the POTUS’s mind. This knowledge is predicated upon Woodward’s wonderful ability to tease out the man behind the presidential mask. Trump concedes both his hollowness and ineptitude indisputably on the occasions he gets drawn into conversations with Woodward on American realities. When Woodward enquires about Trump’s ability to empathize with the Black constituency in the light of the George Floyd horror, the president lets his guard of whataboutery slip, admitting to not only a history of entrenched racism but also his own disdain saying: “They [Blacks] were making more money than they ever made.”

Some of the best moments of the book, however, do not feature Trump. The interactions of Jim Mattis — Woodward is noticeably sympathetic to the former defence secretary — with his Chinese counterpart with the picturesque George Washington estate as the setting or Kim Jong Un’s deliberations with Mike Pompeo in Pyongyang offer rare, fascinating peeps into the shrouded world of international diplomacy.

Trump, in spite of all his obvious limitations, ticks one box. The president granted as many as 17 on-the-record interviews — Rage draws heavily on these tête-à-têtes — to a journalist from a publication that has been a principal critic of the president. This kind of access to the top echelons of power is becoming severely restricted in other democracies.

Surely Narendra Modi, the taciturn prime minister who has given an occasional interview to Akshay Kumar, could emulate POTUS in this aspect.