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    Fear: Trump in the White House
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    Fear: Trump in the White House
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    Fear: Trump in the White House
    Audiobook12 hours

    Fear: Trump in the White House

    Written by Bob Woodward

    Narrated by Robert Petkoff

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    THE SUNDAY TIMES NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER
    THE OBSERVER BOOK OF THE YEAR

    'I think you’ve always been fair.' — President Donald J. Trump, in a call to Bob Woodward, August 14, 2018

    THE INSIDE STORY ON PRESIDENT TRUMP, AS ONLY BOB WOODWARD CAN TELL IT.

    With authoritative reporting honed through eight presidencies from Nixon to Obama, author Bob Woodward reveals in unprecedented detail the harrowing life inside President Donald Trump’s White House and precisely how he makes decisions on major foreign and domestic policies. Woodward draws from hundreds of hours of interviews with firsthand sources, meeting notes, personal diaries, files and documents. The focus is on the explosive debates and the decision-making in the Oval Office, the Situation Room, Air Force One and the White House residence.

    Fear is the most intimate portrait of a sitting president ever published during the president’s first years in office.

    'Woodward’s meticulous account of office intrigues, the president’s men don’t seem to be trembling with fright.  What they mostly feel is contempt for Trump or pity for his ignorance and the “teenage logic” of his obsessively vented grievances.' - The Observer

    'Horribly fascinating. Strongly recommended. If you can bear it.' Richard Dawkins

    'He is the master and I'd trust him over politicians of either party any day of the week.' —Peter Baker, New York Times
     
    'His work has been factually unassailable . . . In an age of ‘alternative facts’ and corrosive tweets about ‘fake news,’ Woodward is truth’s gold standard.' - Jill Abramson, The Washington Post

    'Fear depicts a White House awash in dysfunction, where the Lord of the Flies is the closest thing to an owner's manual.' The Guardian

    'I’ve been on the receiving end of a Bob Woodward book. There were quotes in it I didn’t like. But never once—never—did I think Woodward made it up. Anonymous sources have looser lips and may take liberties. But Woodward always plays is straight. Someone told it to him.' — Ari Fleisher, White House Press Secretary for George W. Bush
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio UK
    Release dateSep 11, 2018
    ISBN9781471181474
    Author

    Bob Woodward

    DR BOB WOODWARD was born in 1947 in Gloucester, United Kingdom. Having studied at state and Steiner schools, he became a co-worker at the Sheiling School in Thornbury, a centre of the Camphill Community, based on the teachings of Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925). He remained within the Camphill Movement for some forty years, teaching children with special educational needs, retiring in 2012. He took a special interest in understanding autism in children and young people. At the age of 46, Bob received an MEd degree from Bristol University, followed by an MPhil at the age of 50 and a PhD from the University of the West of England at the age of 64. As well as being a qualified educator, he is a spiritual healer and the author of several books, including Knowledge of Spirit Worlds, Journeying Into Spirit Worlds and Karma in Human Life. He has been married for some 46 years and has five grown-up children and currently ten grandchildren.

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    Reviews for Fear

    4/5

    718 ratings76 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Amazing work, cringe worthy content, surreal story of leadership at its most
    • 5/5
      Deeply insightful, not only into the behaviour of Trump, but also the supporting cast.
    • 5/5
      Typical of Bob Woodward: fully researched and reported, impeccable sources, thoroughly damning to Trump. Special counsel Robert Mueller probably used this book as evidence in his investigation of Trump. Woodward brought down Nixon. Now he is going to bring down Trump.
    • 3/5
      Finished reading in one sitting. Not sure about the point of the book beyond repeating word of mouth and cataloging events. Left with "So what?"The editing is also terrible and seems forced/rushed. By that I mean, did we not already know all that was repeated or the way things played out? I was looking to understand the rationale for various actions and none of the commentary seemed to cover that satisfactorily, for me. Also, no answers to questions such as what links a sequence of actions/policy decisions to one another, what's the vested interest of a key player in pursuing an agenda etc. I'm probably not the target audience for this book I guess.
    • 5/5
      Great book. Made me relate a little bit to some of the people in the White House despite their actions.
    • 2/5
      Let's be honest, this book is basically gossip. You don't need the first hand accounts of administration lackeys to understand Trump and his government. This administration is fairly transparent about its xenophobic and economic priorities.

      There's this point about 2/3rds through Woodward's book where you start to wonder if his key sources really get challenged for being part of the policies of the Trump administration. It never happens. It makes for a strange lack of accountability in a book that subscribes to "a great man" theory as the theme, but with Trump being a grand buffoon. Doesn't this make the story not Trump's lies and stupidity but rather the utter moral failure of the cabinet and hangers-on that enable his rule?

      Maybe history will be kinder to Woodward's expose of the inner workings of the White House. To me, Fear seems like a cautionary tale in regards to how access journalism misses the real story of Trump's political fortunes: adjacency to power turned Woodward's sources into craven enablers, not "adults in the room."
    • 4/5
      This book was depressing and terrifying. It does an excellent job of laying out how incredibly UNFIT this man is to be president of the United States. It made me sick to my stomach in places to read what an ignorant racist he is, even though I already knew from reading the news. Gross. But good book.
    • 3/5
      Each chapter looks at a different moment in the Trump White House and how frustrated staffers and appointees scrambled to keep Trump from doing something that would undermine the country's interests. Clearly the man had no understanding of geopolitics and economic policies and stubbornly viewed them through his businessman lens. God bless those staffers and appointees; clearly they served their country by constantly clawing its leadership back off the cliff. Where would this country be today if not for them?
    • 3/5
      I enjoy reading Bob Woodward's longform journalism and reporting because it's written well and simply. Woodward covers topics and situations by chapter and we get an inside look at how Trump managed or rather, "tried" to manage these crucial situations, and struggled to do so.
      For me, part of the enjoyment in reading this book was the affirmation of what a shit show his administration really was.
    • 3/5
      I'd just suggest you read this regardless of where you stand. Actually make up your own mind instead of having your thought overlords telling you what to think.
    • 4/5
      A slow read, because there isn't really a story line, just "then this happened". It is a series of vignettes. I expect that Woodward dug into the leads he had, then arranged them in chronological order.

      On the other hand, this is just terrifying. Trump is incompetent, ignorant, and lies all the time. He has a breathtakingly wrong understanding of trade and diplomacy, even of national security.

      I kept wondering why Brett Kavanaugh's nomination wasn't withdrawn. Just pick someone else and they would sail through. Now I understand. Trump will NEVER admit that he was wrong, so he would never withdraw the nomination.

    • 3/5
      Bob Woodward summed up the book with a quote from John Dowd, Trump's lawyer in the Mueller probe: 'Trump is a f**king liar'.
    • 4/5
      The book is very well written. The author deserves 5 stars, but my disdain for the main character affects my judgement. My apologies
    • 4/5
      Chaotic One-Man Show

      What comes through loud and clear in Bob Woodward’s Oz-like curtain reveal is that Donald Trump is out of his depth; that he cannot grasp how government functions, let alone how international relations work; that he cannot seem to budge from his own preconceived notions on authority, trade, and any number of other subjects; that he’s not capable of learning; that he can’t take advice and dislikes anybody tagged as an expert; that he enjoys winning, only winning by his definition, at any cost; that something is good when it benefits him; that he yearns for total control, like he exercised in his business; that he seems to have no long or short term memory; and that he lies about everything to everybody. His incompetency shines through on nearly every page.

      Woodward writes simply. He threads through the major topics well known to anybody who follows the news by whatever method they choose. These are trade, international relations, the DPRK challenge, being personally liked, reliance on personal relations with authoritarian leaders, lambasting of the free press, and, of course, Robert Mueller and the Russia investigation. We see how Trump manages, or more correctly, mismanages. Much of this has to do with insistence on his immutable ideas, his method of end running pretty much everybody who works for him, his knack for taking advice from exactly the wrong people (e.g., the likes of Peter Navarro and Wilbur Ross), his penchant for undermining his staff (from Kelley to Porter to Priebus to McMaster, most history now), and perhaps what will be most fatal to him, not listening to his competent lawyers, particularly John Dowd.

      As for his demagoguery, what’s more distressing than what he spouts on his ongoing, ceaseless campaign rallies is how calculated and cynical these pronouncements are. Does Trump believe in anything, that is other than his brand, his sable genius, and profit? Apparently not.

      Part of the enjoyment of reading Fear is seeing that what his better advisors warned about are coming to pass. At the very moment of this writing, the economy is top of mind. Trump inherited a strengthening economy and seems intent on reversing all that’s good about it. This passage, then, is very telling, not only about how Trump operates, but how he defers to his worst advisors and how he introduces his reckless business practices (recall he declared bankruptcy six times) into national affairs:

      “[Gary] Cohn knew the real battle was going to be over tariffs, where Trump had the most rigid views and where he could do the most damage to the U.S. and world economies. He shoveled all the data he could to the president about how tariffs on imported steel would be a disaster and hurt the economy.

      “A 17-page document that Cohn sent contained a chart showing the minuscule revenue earned in 2002-03 when President Bush had imposed steel tariffs for similar reasons. It showed that the revenue that came in was $650 million. That was .04 percent of the total federal revenue of $1.78 trillion ….

      “Tens of thousands of U.S. jobs had been lost in industries that consumed steel, Cohn said, and produced a chart to prove it.

      “Trump had three allies who agreed with him that trade deficits mattered: Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, Peter Navarro and Bob Lighthizer, the U.S. trade representative.

      “Navarro said that the data did not include the jobs created in the steel mills under the Bush tariffs of 2002-03.

      “‘You’re right,’ Cohn said. ‘We created 6,000 jobs in steel mills.’”

      “‘Your data is just wrong,’ Navarro said.

      “Trump was determined to impose steel tariffs. ‘Look,’ Trumps aid, ‘we’ll try it. If it doesn’t work, we’ll undo it.’

      “‘Mr. President,’ Cohn said. ‘that’s not what you do with the U.S. economy.’ Because the stakes were so high, it was crucial to be conservative. ‘You do something when you’re 100 percent certain it will work, and then you pray like hell that you’re right. You don’t do 50/50 with the U.S. economy.’

      “‘If we’re not right,’ Trump repeated, ‘we roll them back.’”

      And there you have it, the Trump presidency in a nutshell. So, if you’re worried, you have good cause to be. If you’re not, perhaps you should read Fear as soon as you can.
    • 3/5
      A well written, engaging but episodic political history of Donald Trump’s election to the White House in 2015 and first two and a bit years in office through to the resignation of John Dowd, his legal adviser in March 2018.For an interested British reader, who has read a lot of US political journalism in the past two years, this is quite difficult to follow, as reasonably the author who is primarily writing for a US audience, does not take time explaining the US political system. However, it was really interesting to Woodward’s considered descriptions of the events to my recollections. Most interesting was why most advisers resigned or were sacked, because having worked with him, they decided Trump was “a xxx liar”.
    • 5/5
      Typically superb reporting by Woodward. The book gives a more rounded and human view of Trump than you can get in the media (left or right) or certainly on social media. Not only insights into how the White House works, but the book contains fascinating accounts of how staffers and politicians, whatever their motives, backgrounds, or political beliefs, had to constantly act, react, and adjust to the mercurial (read unbalanced) president. They stepped through the looking glass from the White House to the madhouse.
    • 4/5
      Impeccable research .Woodward seems to be a fly on the wall of many meetings during Trump’s presidency. And Trump emerges as a bullying narcissist, who is unable/unwilling to read or listen. A man completely lacking in empathy, who believes that the only thing that matters is $$$$$$$ . This account isn’t The West Wing.
    • 3/5
      So... fake news or not? Although it seems to stem from interviews from the principles involved or were fired or quit, it is hard to determine what is truth and what is merely the perception of those interviewed. the anecdotes shared were eye-opening and I am sure most of them are factual. Kinda scary!!!
    • 4/5
      Early encounters and experience with Donald Trump and staff from the first couple of years in the White House are recorded in this collection of incidents and issues. Woodward is a multiple Pulitzer Prize winning author best known for his work with the Nixon-Watergate scandal. He writes very few personal opinions, instead letting the record speak for itself with direct quotations and recordings.
    • 1/5
      This isn't a book. This is a collection of stories made primarily for the media to pull excerpts from. No effort is made to give any of the conversations in this book any context.

      Woodward had a golden opportunity here to write a book that actually means something, but it's little more than a loosely coupled pile of stories.
    • 3/5
      I pretty much recommend it. It's shorter than I thought, easy reading, and not at all disgusting (surprisingly, somehow) stumbling around with those people (as opposed to the daily news).

      The writing is quite choppy. Is that how Woodward writes nowadays, or is it some Joycean affect of the White House and our dear leader?

      Boy, I certainly don't get the "sympathy" for DJT in the story. He is in the book, as well as before and after this particular depiction, an enormous, ignorant, utter piece of shit.

      Also, Rob Porter comes off as some kind of good guy and hero. Sad. I am good friends with people who know him very well here in the DC area; a friend's wife worked with Porter's first wife (off and on, then and now) and saw her come into the office years ago with her first black eye. No, no, he fits right in with this horrific group of people.

      The point about DJT, and this particular book and its initial headlines, eg, about the removal of documents from his desk, is that, no, he does not forget, he continues to return to his ignorant and idiotic "ideas" and plans, and continues to implement.
    • 3/5
      Think that's me done for now with books about 45. Found the section about trade tarriffs surprisingly interesting, and how China have effectively weaponised theirs - able to pinpoint at a state by state level, with the ability to influence politics inherent in that
    • 3/5
      It took me eleven months to read this book. I checked it out of the library a couple of times. Recently I bought a used copy at a library bookstore. There are many statements in quotes throughout the book. The author didn't actually reveal his sources. I had fun speculating on who I thought some of the sources might be: Priebus, Bannon, Porter, Dowd and maybe Kelly. The amount of lying, back stabbing and chaos in the Trump White House is astounding.
    • 4/5
      This book was like drifting through a party of interesting people most of whom you don’t like and overhearing just parts of their conversation. Then your friend whispers a word or two of educated conjecture to fill in the gaps. You feel like you know what’s going on, and maybe you do, but the bull often piles up high at parties and no one is interrupting the chat to get at the facts. I don’t doubt that much of what I read in this book is true but I am willing to admit that part of the reason for that feeling is based on my personal expectations that the worst about Trump is likely true. There is a heaping helping of insider info here about the first year of the Trump presidency that should make anyone feel anywhere from uneasy to downright fearful about the future. This I suspect if one of the reasons for the title. Most likely the title refers Trump’s campaign strategy of scaring voters rather than appeal to the better angels of their character. The one-word title also stands as a stark demarcation between Trump and the previous administrations message of HOPE. When this book was published, much of the media coverage focused on how staffers working within the White House were guiding Trump away from trouble as best they could by maneuvering around him or taking advantage of his short attention span to simply remove items that might allow him to do harm. The book covers Trump’s first year in office and these activities are very much in evidence. Also, you can see the steady change of the guard around Trump as people are fired, resign or hauled off to the hoosegow. The climate grows more intemperate after these changes and the worst seems to be coming. This simmering angst inspired a nod to Hunter S. Thompson by wondering if the sequel to FEAR might not just be entitled LOATHING. This book reads fast--moving from one scandal to another pulling you along like the Lusitania looking for a torpedo. As often happens in life one is left with the hope of a strong cleansing rain that will eventually come and wash the mud from our faces, out of our eyes and away from us for good. But hold on, it’s going to be a minute.
    • 4/5
      I thought an interesting book to listen too, Not sure if this book was meant to bash Trump but for his base I'm sure it had the opposite effect. The final words in the book was no great revelation, Trump is an Effing Liar. No news here. Enjoyed the banter between the political players.
    • 4/5
      Extremely well-documented and frightening account of life in the Trump White House. Irrespective of party affiliation, Woodward's book does little to build confidence in our current administration.

    • 4/5
      To be honest, there is nothing that can shock me about the ineptitude, corruption, silliness and stupidity by Trump or anyone else in his administration. How anyone with any self-respect or intelligence could work for an individual of limited abilities and unlimited faults, is beyond me. Woodward describes a president who won't read briefing books but gets his information watching cable TV, especially FOX News.

      20 or 30 years from now, some student or historian will read Woodward's book and wonder how the hell the presidency had gotten to that point. As much as they will wonder about Trump, they will also wonder about the people who worked for him and why they put up with Trump's insults and incompetency...

      I skimmed through much of the book as there were sections that were just too painful and upsetting to read. Obviously Woodward did a great job in researching the book and contacting members of the administration and getting their perspective.

      Again, if you are a Trump supporter, you will have no interest in reading this book – – you will label it as fake news just as any other criticism of Trump is considered.
    • 4/5
      Fascinatingly detailed account - with actual conversations on essential topics of government policy, all reflecting Trump's questionable knowledge of any subject related to governing and his impatient and immature reactions to his advisers - not that we didn't know all this already, but at the same time, another poignant proof, in much, much detail. If it were not for such a credible journalist as Bob Woodward I would be skeptical about how such detailed conversations could have been obtained. I listened to the audio version - very well narrated by Robert Petkoff.
    • 4/5
      Woodward's book confirms what we already knew - Trump really IS a moron. He's an arrogant, ignorant, reckless, dangerous, malignant man, and we should all be afraid, especially if he gets re-elected.
    • 5/5
      This is a very well-written terrifying look at the process of making Trump president in very manipulative and frightening ways. Frightening because it shows how easy it was for nefarious people to manipulate American voters into voting for the inept, unqualified man that is now president. It is terrifying to believe that such an incompetent man is now the leader of our nation all because he was marketed to the lowest common denominator and got him elected.