{"id":1824,"date":"2020-10-06T08:30:01","date_gmt":"2020-10-06T15:30:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.timporter.com\/seconddraft\/?p=1824"},"modified":"2020-10-06T08:32:57","modified_gmt":"2020-10-06T15:32:57","slug":"rage-why-woodward-on-trump-is-worth-reading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.timporter.com\/seconddraft\/?p=1824","title":{"rendered":"“Rage” — Why Woodward on Trump is Worth Reading"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Trump has been good for the <\/em>media, but bad for journalism. The electronic media-sphere reeks of all Trump all the time, from the partisan jousting of the knights of cable, CNN and Fox, to a cornucopia of websites and podcasts leaning left or right, to Trump\u2019s social media lodestone, Twitter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As always with the interwebs,<\/strong> there is more noise than substance. That is what legacy news organizations like the New York Times and the Washington Post are supposed to provide. And they do. For a hefty meal of hard-core investigative reporting, belly up to the hundreds of column inches filled by the Times just a week ago about Trump\u2019s heretofore hidden tax returns \u2013 a high-calorie carbo-load of facts, truths and documents. The challenge for the big-boy newspapers is that Trump doesn\u2019t stand still. He is a Rube Goldberg machine of perpetual news, outrage and scandal. What is Page One today is gone tomorrow (or even this evening). Look how Trump\u2019s current Covid adventure relegated the Times\u2019 blockbuster tax reporting to the morgue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How then, in this gopher-on-a-wheel news cycle,<\/strong> does a staid, old-school, war-horse of a reporter like Bob Woodward, the inventor of a form of book-length journalism best described as anonymous-sources-meet-my-daily-diary-meet-the-telephone-book-meet-C-SPAN, write a recounting of the Trump presidency that has any currency?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In part, the answer is the short lag time <\/strong>between Woodward\u2019s last conversation with Trump, which was on July 21, the day the manuscript for Rage was due, and date of the book\u2019s publication, which was on September 15, only 59 days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Much happened in that two-month gap,<\/strong> most importantly another 60,000 Americans died of Covid, so here\u2019s another question that must be asked about Rage: Is the book relevant? Yes, I say, and that makes it worth reading.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, let\u2019s admit<\/strong> that no one reads a Woodward book \u2013 and I\u2019ve read a half-dozen \u2013 for the writing. The text accompanying a statin prescription is more compelling. Woodward\u2019s literary style is reminiscent of the joke about the bad restaurant with hefty servings \u2013 hey, the food is bad, but there is a lot of it. In Woodward\u2019s defense, at least he keeps his portions small.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What gives Rage value<\/strong> is Woodward\u2019s dedication to persistence (he did 17 lengthy interviews with Trump) and belief in one of journalism\u2019s core practices, a tool often overlooked in these times of tweet reporting \u2013 the power of accumulation: adding one fact to the next, following the thread of evidence from interview to interview, and stacking truths next to falsehoods. The result is a powerful condemnation of Trump as president, Trump as a man, and Trump as the enabler of others of his ilk, such as his lamprey-like son-in-law, Jared Kushner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is Kushner,<\/strong> somewhat surprisingly because of his just-woken-from-the-tomb appearance, who provides the liveliest quotes in the book. Among them:<\/p>\n\n\n\n