Written by the legendary watergate journalist Bob Woodward, this expose of Donald Trumps first year as Commander in Chief is a rather formulaic, albeit interesting affair and offers us only a few nuggets of information as to what makes the great orange one tick.
As a career business man he is not a party ideologue and was able to recruit the best minds, regardless of political orientation such as the Gary Cohn and Rob Porter, Cohen, a staunch Democrat and Globalist, was the head of investment bank Goldman Sachs, and Rob Porter, a Harvard trained Lawyer and Oxford University Rhodes Scholar and again a staunch Democrat. Along with others, they positioned Trump away from the clutches of the alt-right Republicans, but as the time in office grew, Trump believed in his own intellectual superiority and Increasingly ignored the advice of others.
Cohen had argued vehemently against imposing tariffs on imported steel as being detrimental to the US economy and when Trump unilaterally decided to go ahead, Cohen resigned in frustration.
Similar resignations followed under similar circumstances. Ironically, Woodward’s book makes the point that although Trump rarely has time for experts, his own grasp of economics and international politics is rudimentary at best.
When he found of that the annual cost of stationing 18000 US troops in South Korea cost the American taxpayer an estimated $13 Billion a year, he was livid and was all ready to withdraw them all, to the dismay of the South Koreans and Pentagon.
Trumps thought process is doggedly aligned to that of a businessman in which one would invest a dollar in the hope of getting a higher rate of return. Of course that’s not how international politics work.
He did not understand the crucial geo-political reasons for having troops there and of course the ever increasing threat from North Korea. It took a monumental effort by the South Koreans and the Pentagon to stop him.
The title of the book, ‘fear’ comes from a interview Trump gave in 2016 ‘Real power is – I don’t even want to use the word – fear’.
With credit to Woodward the book is not a one sided attack on the President but a fair but damning assessment of perhaps the most controversial President in U.S. history.
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