“Rage,” by Bob Woodward. President Trump really is off the wall…
Published
by
Richard Kuper
JVL Introduction
Bob Woodward’s new 392-page chronicle of the Donald Trump presidency, Rage is due to be published today, 15 September.
Early leaks of the book’s details have been explosive – including an admission from Trump that he was “playing” down the threat posed by COVID-19.
In this short extract below Andrew Feinberg looks at the lies and fabrications which have poisoned US policy towards the Palestinians.
This article was originally published by the Independent on Fri 11 Sep 2020. Read the original here.
The most outrageous revelations in Bob Woodward’s book ‘Rage’ aren’t the ones you’ve heard about
It’s not just lies about coronavirus. Woodward writes of the president as a man who can’t tell fantasy from reality
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Quite a revelation which epitomises a) the snake that is Netanyahu and b) the intellectual deficiency and inability of Trump to listen to people like Rex Tillerson. Bob Woodward’s book along with the other recent publications paint a picture of a President truly ” not fit for the job”. Sadly many innocents and oppressed peoples like the Palestinians are suffering the consequences. However these revelations must give hope to all those of us who care deeply about truth and injustice, even though it appears that Trump’s base is still much stronger than it ought to be. We also, of course, need to be very sober in regard to Joe Biden and Israel/Palestine.
Trump’s gullibility is comparable to that of the entire British Establishment including the Labour Right, the billionaire press. Indeed, it comes not from naive gullibility but from conscious lying over such a long period that it has become second nature: “a land without people”, “the Arab notables’ broadcast calling on Palestinians to leave room for the ‘invading Arab armies'”, ‘the democratic character of Israel’ and so on. These pillars of Zionism are therefore still more culpable.
May I also recommend Sir Kim Darroch’s book: Collateral Damage – Britain, America and Europe in the Age of Trump. (To be published on Thursday). He was the UK ambassador in Washington last year before Boris threw him under a bus when his private emails were leaked…the book contains truly shocking revelations about the Trump administration and US foreign policy. (Sir Kim originally hailed from North Durham).
There are two things that are worth bearing in mind here:
1. Trump is not the problem; it is those many who maintain him in power when his idiocy is so flagrantly apparent to all those who have eyes to see and ears to hear. Republican leaders cold have removed him from office at any moment – certainly they could have done so at the time of the impeachment proceedings. If a half-wit is being encouraged to believe that he should be king of the universe, don’t blame the half-wit.
2. US foreign policy is far more a reflection of long-term US policy than it is of any individual president. Trump may be able to skew certain aspects of foreign policy; policies against left-wing regimes and in favour of right-wing dictatorships have been pretty much consistent for the last sixty years.
Odd that one of the few things that – like the legendary stopped watch – Trump got right was that the lethality of Covid was vastly overblown (in the UK, 2019/20 was only 8th in terms of seasonal mortality since 1993. Did anyone notice those 7 other years?).
Not a good look for Woodward’s journalism that he got this basic fact so wrong – even if journalism has a generally appalling record in just perpetuating hand-me-down myths about the virus.