Woodward’s transcription of their talks confirms Trump’s mental murk, his verbal muddle, and a concentration span that Dr Anthony Fauci reckons to be “a minus number”. While still in spaniel mode, Trump allowed Woodward to record their interviews, so this is an oral history in which a self-obsessed but blithely unself-aware blabbermouth blows the whistle on himself. He remains a menace to public health, so shouldn’t the poor deranged creature be put down? Trump failed to function as the nation’s guard dog: he was alerted to the imminence of a deadly pandemic in January, yet went on officially pooh-poohing Covid-19 as a hoax concocted by the Democrats.

Having tracked his distempered antics all year, Woodward ends with a solemn reminder of the president’s constitutional duty “to warn, protect”. A veterinarian could settle that: Trump does seem to be suffering from an inflammation of the doggy brain. Trump’s repetitive bluster sucks up all the air in the room and reduces auditors to stifled silenceĪll the same, he tells Woodward that he’s uncertain whether his gift for enraging people is “an asset or a liability”. Trump fancies that the rage he incites in the mobs at his rallies is a crusading zeal actually it’s a provocation to armed riot, and it makes nonsense of his defensive claim that he “played down” the threat of the coronavirus so as to “show calmness”. Much as he dotes on adulation, he is equally happy to be loathed, and he regales Woodward with video clips of his opponents glaring at him during his State of the Union address last winter: “See the hate!” he says, weirdly elated. Like every statement he makes, it was a boast. “I bring rage out,” Trump tells Woodward in one of their early encounters. Unleashed by his executive power, he snarls, incoherently froths and, in scenes witnessed by Woodward’s sources, runs around yelping “Holy shit!” or “I’m fucked!” A better title for Rage, perhaps, would be Rabid. Yet when closeted with his harried aides or beleaguered cabinet members, Trump mutates into the carnivorous hound of the Baskervilles. “Honey, I’m talking to Bob Woodward!” he proudly announces when Melania interrupts one of their phone calls, and he even imparts whispered nuclear secrets in the hope that this upright, fanatically factual journalist – who began his career by exposing the Watergate burglary and thus scuttled Nixon’s presidency – will relax into an obsequious court reporter. That’s OK.” It’s the creed of a grovelling lap dog, and Trump follows up with flattering licks and whiny appeals to have his belly scratched. “I love this guy,” says Trump when granting access to Bob Woodward. There’s no need: he is his own fawning poodle and envenomed cur. Now I understand why Trump refuses to have a dog in the White House.

Rage bob woodward