I just finished Bob Woodward's book

[Snake Plissken]

It's full of so much dysfunction I don't even know where to begin, such as Trump not being able to understand that imposing tariffs on imported Chinese steel will not bring back automobile jobs from North Carolina and Tennessee to Detroit.

You have to read it for yourself to appreciate the level of dysfunction.

But one thing that really stuck out and should have been pretty obvious, is Trump's most proudest accomplishment is coining the nickname "Little Rocketman" for Kim Jong-un. He really is a child, and everyone who deals with him on a day to day basis knows it.

[smirkymonkey]

1. Thanks for the review.

I would like to read it. I'm sure there will be nothing in it that will shock me, but I still think it would be an interesting read.

[Snake Plissken]

6. Honestly the first few chapters prior to the election were very painful for me to read

I ended up reliving all the mistakes that were made to allow him to steal this election

[Power 2 the People]

7. A sad chapter in our history.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

10. Does Woodward call out the media who put profit over truth? Put horse-racing over fact-checking?

[Honeycombe8]

21. The media did a great job. That's why we knew about the lies & why Trump hates them.

All through 2016, Trump was called out on his lies and hostility and preying on fear and hate. His statements were presented "as is," which is a reporter's job, and then questions pointed out the lies. They did a great job.

The political talk shows really got into it, which is where you see the breaking down and enormity of the lies and hostility and shamefulness of his behavior. The NYT and Washington Post were outstanding.

Understanding the difference between reporting, investigative reporting, and political talk shows is critical.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

22. NYT, WaPo and Newsweek were good. But most media made a false equivalency.

Most media ginned up negative coverage on Hillary's emails.





They de-emphasized climate change



They gave a preponderance of coverage to tRump:



They played up Clinton's health (bogusly) and played down the Trump Foundation scandals (purposely negligently):



They went heavily negative on Clinton to make it more a horse-race, for ratings profit:







Do you still think the media did "A GREAT JOB"?

[Honeycombe8]

24. As your evidence shows, the media was fixated on Trump.

Thanks for making my point.

BTW...the Clinton emails was a legitimate investigation by the FBI that was made public, so it would be covered. Duh.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

26. Of course emails were covered, & over-covered. Repeatedly. While tRump flaws & failings neglected.

Further, Clinton's policy initiatives were under-covered. Trump's policy pronouncements were given more coverage and were not properly scrutinized.

[Honeycombe8]

29. I disagree. You have this in your head...

so no evidence will convince you otherwise.

The reporter's job is not to play partisan for one candidate or the other. You would agree with that, if the situation had been reversed...Trump had been the object of a federal criminal investigation. But it was Clinton, not Trump, who was under a federal criminal investigation.

Her speeches were covered, the debates were covered, the questions at the debates were good for the most part. Trump's outrageous statements were covered, his failure to decry David Duke, etc. Days of coverage on the Trump Access Hollywood tapes.

The coverage was fair, for the most part, that I could see. The political talk shows is where partisanship should show up, and it did. Trump was excoriated repeatedly in the talk shows, where people are free to give opinions and highlight certain things. Morning Joe every morning spent 1 1/2 hours pointing out how awful Trump was, how unfit he was, compared to the other Republicans.

Fox News is an exception, of course. We all know that. Even so, Shep Smith did a pretty good job of exposing Trump for what he was.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

30. I showed you the evidence about the unbalanced negativity. You ignore it.

You are presenting anecdotal stories about the coverage you saw.

I presented data from independent sources.

[Honeycombe8]

31. No....I'm a political junkie and watched/read the news every day.

I saw every debate by both parties and the Trump-Clinton ones. I watched MJ every morning. Every Trump interview.

I can gather "balanced" news stories to show you it was balanced. Or I could pick out some to show unbalanced news.

But the FACT remains: We were told about the bankrupcties, the interviews with people who knew him from NY real estate & revealed he had a terrible reputation as an unethical snake, we were told repeatedly about the lies and exaggerations, we saw the shameful failure to decry David Duke and to say that people marching with neo-Nazis were very fine people, and all the rest.

You are ignoring HOW you know about these things. It's not from osmosis or telepathy. It's because the MEDIA told you.

It's their job to report what the candidates say and do. I suspect that some on both sides want the reports to be of their people mainly, and mainly the good stuff. I accept that it should be balanced. I think that's the difference.

The proof is in the pudding. How do the Republicans and Trumpers view the coverage of him? So harmful that Trump calls them "the enemy of the people." 'Nuff said.

I'm done arguing about this. You have your mindset...the media is bad, the media is a tool for Republicans, etc., etc. I disagree, and I base that on what I see, what I read. They don't always get it perfect. They are humans. But they did a great job, IMO, of presenting Trump for what he is. And that's why Trumpers hate the media.

[zentrum]

23. The media should

.....have covered his NYC real estate corruption, shafting of workers and bankruptcies. Should have made a much bigger, emblematic story of the rip-off of Trump University.

Instead they just gave him millions of dollars of free media coverage but that exposed very little. Isn't it Moonves who said "Trump is bad for America but great for NBC"? They didn't want to really investigate the ratings cow that Trump was.

[Honeycombe8]

25. It did. We were all made aware of his bankruptcies and sales to Russians, etc. Thanks. nt

[Bernardo de La Paz]

27. We at DU were aware. But the average voter was not aware. Do not confuse the two. Please. . nt

[zentrum]

39. +1

[Fiendish Thingy]

32. If the media had covered Trump's bankruptcies and Russian mob connections with the same fervor

As HRC's emails, we might have had a different outcome.

The media wanted a horse race so viewers wouldn't tune out, and ratings and ad revenue would be maximized. They covered empty stages waiting for Trump to appear, while Sanders and Clinton were giving live speeches that went uncovered- and that was CNN, not Fox.

[zentrum]

38. The middle of the

...country was not. And the Russia story I don't believe was out there until post-election.

There's no way to compare the politically engaged such as those on DU with the average tee-vee watcher. It's up to the MSM to take responsibility for which story they are going to drive with headlines.

There are surveys and studies that show there was much (much) more time spent on HRC's emails than on an in-depth explanation and description of Trump bankrupties. That's a media failure.

[calimary]

11. I'm not sure I can get through that part.

I may have to skip ahead.

[underthematrix]

2. Thank you for posting this.

My copy won't arrive for about two weeks. I have a question. One of the excerpts from the books describes Trump wandering into WH meetings making declarative false statements and some people in the meeting reinforcing those false statements.

From that snippet, I got the impression Trump was never ever in charge of the government and was not expected to be. What's your take?

[HipChick]

12. Do you recall this story....he never wanted the duties that came along with it...going to outsource

to VP..

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/07/john-kasich-donald-trump-vice-president

[DesertRat]

13. I wonder if that's why Manafort handpicked Pence?

[underthematrix]

18. Oh great link. I recall reading about this story in another

publication. And I remember MSNBC discussing this issue at length.

[Ohiogal]

3. Thank you!

With all that's been coming out and in the news, it's astonishing that anyone with more than two brain cells still defends this moron.

[magicarpet]

4. "child" denotes an element of innocence...

.... "Idiot - Fucking Idiot" better reflects the vision of trDump.

[Le Gaucher]

16. A child evokes our parental instincts .. This guy deserves to be bull-whipped

Bullwhipped till his bones are exposed

[TeamPooka]

5. i still love that time during an economic tax cuts speech where the word "rocket" appeared in his

telepromter and trump went off on a little rocketman riff for two minutes.
attention span of a two year old.

[BigmanPigman]

8. Man, you're fast.

I thought my mom was fast but you beat her to the end. Did you take Evelyn Wood's speed reading course?

[samnsara]

9. i have the audible..and have alexa read it to me. I can only listen to it for a short time...

...it just makes me so angry and scared at the same time. Also I dont care a lot for the reader.

[Mira]

20. I'm reading it on Audible as well

and I'm close to through. The degree of 45's lack of competence on all levels, the inability of the staff and "best people" around him to contain him in his bumbling, the desperate need of them to do it for all our sake is all so present throughout the book that it's nauseating. Nothing that is new. But the details, given so scrupulously by a master journalist, paint a picture of us being in the hands of indescribable danger and I can't even fathom the heights of it. The other day I heard an interview with Tony Schwartz, the real author of "The Art of the Deal". He was asked what would be the hallmark of a person with the psychiatric disorders, and personality disorders of DJT when they go down. His answer chilled me to the bone: "When that happens they want to take the most possible people down with them. And he has the nuclear codes."
The book by Woodward, and his clear depiction of the nightmare of chaos at our highest level of government, along with the ongoing new bombshells happening daily that even quiet the tweeter in chief for a minute while he rants in the White House, all of this makes me seriously want to crawl into a large underground place I may start digging tomorrow.
I live in NC, and the ground is very soft.

[no_hypocrisy]

14. "Little Rocketman" was also a dig at Elton John

who contradicted and refuted that he would play for Drumph's inauguration.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

17. Just starting. Boring about Bannon so far.

[tavernier]

19. I'm two chapters from the end.

It is as you describe, but IMO, Woodward was quite generous to him. Apparently BW saw glimpses of heart in the guy, as well as a few other human emotions. I suppose he might have moments of some sort of resemblance to our species, but then I remember the children he kidnapped and imprisoned, and I quickly shake it off.

[Dave Starsky]

33. There are times in this book when Woodward goes off the rails in defense of Trump.

Like the time he questions the credibility of the Steele dossier, because its sources were never subject to a lie detector test regarding the content. Well, no fucking shit, because there IS no such thing as a lie detector test. There is a very good reason why polygraph tests aren't accepted as evidence in court cases. They are easily defeated by skillful liars and clueless people and can give false positives when people are telling the God's honest truth.

I guess Woodward felt he had to still give somewhat of an air of being "impartial", even at the risk of sacrificing a certain amount of credibility.

[tavernier]

34. Yes.

At times he almost seems to infer that some of Rump’s ideas would have been successful if they hadn’t been thwarted by staff. Perhaps I was just reading that into some of his stories, but I felt slightly uncomfortable with that take.

[Dave Starsky]

35. I'm only about a third of the way through, and I'm getting the same vibe.

To be honest, I'm finding this book to be a bit of a slog. It's not really telling me anything I didn't already know about Donald. You can tell he's a feeble-minded egomaniac, completely unsuited for the job, just from his own daily actions and tweets. I guess it helps that we now have confirmation from insiders.

Maybe I'm not far enough into the book, but I'm finding that Woodward is completely skirting Trump's other serious character flaws--like the fact that he is a long-time chiseler and conman with certain connections to shady mobsters in the US and Russia. He seems to be completely glossing over that. There are also several times in the book when he portrays Steve Bannon as the sharpest, funniest, most hail-fellow-well-met guy in the room. If there is ANY discussion of the evil white supremacy at the heart of Bannon's most basic fundamental philosophies, I haven't seen it.

I'm reading this book cautiously. It may take me forever to get through. I enjoyed Malcolm Nance's and Craig Unger's books much more, and they were a lot more "technical" and less novel-like.

[tavernier]

36. I can see his followers thinking,

“Well what’s wrong with that? He would have fixed the problem if his staff hadn’t interfered.”

They are certain he is a misunderstood genius.

Thanks for the tip. I haven’t read either of those books but I’ll be sure to look into them.

[Dave Starsky]

37. Nance's book covers the long list of shenanigans that Russia has been involved in...

In attempting to undermine the US (and, in particular, our sanctions against Putin and the oligarchs), while Unger's book focuses on Trump's shady business deals and relationships with Russian organized crime figures and Vladimir Putin going back decades. Since they cover different material, you can read them both without retreading too much.

Both books were surprisingly easy reads. I think I finished each of them in about three or four days.

[KayF]

28. he has better nicknames that that!

here's the complete list. How about "Sour Lemon" for Don Lemon? Get it?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nicknames_used_by_Donald_Trump

[Frequency Kenneth]

40. No need to be insulting children

Trump is a monkey, not even an ape, compulsively shitting in his paw and slinging it at America willy-nilly!