Here is a book that has sold 1.1 million copies in less than a month since its release on 7/11, making it one of the fastest selling books in the world. And it is by an author, Bob Woodward, who, as one of America’s most famous investigative journalists, has covered nine presidencies ─ from Richard Nixon to Donald Trump.
His first book All the President’s Men (1974), co-authored with his Washington Post colleague Carl Bernstein, chronicled the Watergate Scandal, which became Nixon’s ‘Waterloo’.
His latest book Fear: Trump in the White House will not have the same impact, for sure. If anything, Donald Trump may well win a second term in 2020.
Guess What Trump’s Favourite Word is...
The very likelihood of Trump winning a renewed mandate is one of the things the world fears about America. Americans opposed to him not only fear, but positively dread the prospect, as I found out in my recent travels in that country. But another ‘F’ word made me fear for America, as I finished reading this book non-stop, during my non-stop Air India flight from New York.
The word ‘f**k’ appears with shocking frequency in Woodward’s 362-page book. It is used most of all by President Trump himself.
His senior colleagues in the White House too use it routinely in their own conversations and on a few occasions ─ and this is absolutely unthinkable in the Indian context ─ also while talking to their boss. It’s as if sexism and profanity have become mainstream in the highest echelons of Trumpian administration.
In India, we regard ‘vani shuchita’ (clean language) as a virtue that everyone, especially those in leadership positions, should possess.
Purity of thoughts, feelings, words and deeds ─ this is Mahatma Gandhi’s true meaning of ‘swachhata’ (cleanliness), which he said was indistinguishable from, and a precondition for, ahimsa (nonviolence). Use of dirty and abusive words, particularly those with sexist connotations, is frowned upon. Not all our public figures are paragons of (this) virtue, but most of them know that they cannot get away by speaking obscene language openly. Sadly, these cultural and societal constraints seem to have disappeared from the world’s richest democracy.
Just Locker-Room Talk? Not Quite
Candidate Trump had weathered the storm when, during the last stages of the 2016 campaign, the media had exposed his infamous boast about sexually assaulting women. (“When you are a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the p***y.”) In a half-hearted apology, he had belittled it as “locker-room talk”. But old habits die hard.
Woodward’s book highlights how misogynistic (and phallic) insults come naturally to Trump. Not only in his moments of rage, but also in casual talk, expletives adorn America’s president-speak.
For example, Trump calls Obama, whom he loves to hate, “a weak d**k”. No wonder, Steve Bannon, who served as his ideologue and ‘chief strategist’ in the White House, thinks nothing of saying this about the president’s first chief of staff in the White House: “I reached out and sucked Reince Preibus’s d**k”. Later, when Bannon’s presence in Trump’s White House became too toxic (mainly because he clashed with Trump’s daughter Ivanka and all-powerful son-in-law Jared Kushner), Trump told his senior staff, “I just fired Bannon... m*therf**er.”
Since no member in Trump’s team has any respect for the other, including for the president himself, we read H R McMaster, who was the national security advisor until he was fired, describing Trump himself as “a pr**k”. In an important discussion on trade (in which Trump dogmatically insisted on taking USA along the path of protectionism), Gary Cohn, chairman of the national economic advisory council, shouts at Trump: “If you just shut the f**k up and listen, you might learn something.”
‘We are in Crazy Town’
Woodward gives a blow-by-blow account of a top-secret meeting in the Pentagon’s “secure room”, in which Trump attacks America’s top generals in front of his entire team of senior White House officials. When he is gone, Rex Tillerson, his own secretary of state (subsequently fired unceremoniously), says, “He (President) is a moron”, and he says it in a way so “everyone” in the room can hear. Later, he repeats the same to Preibus, the chief of staff, “I just don’t like the way the president talks to these generals. I can’t sit around and listen to this from the president. He’s just a moron.” (The Chinese must have made a deep study of the disaffection in the top rungs of America’s defence and foreign policy establishment.)
A little later, it is Preibus’s turn to be shown the door humiliatingly; he made the way for retired Marine General John F Kelly.
About his exit, he comments, “The president has zero ability to recognise empathy in any way.” As staff leader, Preibus attempted ─ and failed ─ to bring some order to the White House that was perennially in-fighting. When he left, he lamented, “When you put a snake and rat and a falcon and rabbit and a shark and a seal in a zoo without walls, things start getting nasty and bloody.”
And if you thought the new and current chief of staff is a Trump admirer, you’re in for a disappointment.
Addressing “a small group meeting in his office one day”, Kelley says this of Trump, “He’s an idiot. It’s pointless to try to convince him of anything. He’s gone off the rails. We’re in crazytown. I don’t know why any of us is here. This is the worst job I’ve ever had.”
Fear Inside – and Outside –the White House
And what about Jim Mattis, the defence secretary who recently came to New Delhi, along with Mike Pompeo (who succeeded Tillerson as the secretary of state), for the “2+2” meeting with their counterparts Nirmala Sitharaman and Sushma Swaraj? Another retired Marine General, who is widely read, is regarded as the only “adult” in the White House.
What does this “adult” think of the president he serves?
After a discussion Trump had with his top aides, in which he repeatedly rebuffed them on trade, foreign and military policies, “Mattis was particularly exasperated and alarmed, telling close associates that the president acted like ─ and had the understanding of ─ ‘a fifth or sixth grader’.” According to US media reports, differences between Mattis and Trump have reached a breaking point, and he too might quit soon.
Woodward’s book paints a picture of Trump as someone to whom bad-mouthing and using un-parliamentary language, is second nature.
In a conversation about Robert Mueller and his team who are investigating alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election (to favour Trump), he is quoted as telling them, “Go f**k themselves.” When he orders the bombing of Syria, he says about its president Bashir al-Assad, “Let’s f**k*ng kill him. Let’s go in. Let’s kill the f**k*ng lot of them.”
There are also many other ways in which ‘Trump-talk’ is coarse. He vents his anger at Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, which he has disowned by calling it “shitty”.
Trump’s racism and Islamophobia are well-known, and have defined his policy of severely limiting immigration into America. The book quotes him as saying that USA should not allow immigrants from “shit-hole countries”. However, in the same breath, this supporter of white supremacists also says that he has no objection to more people like “Norwegians” coming to America.
‘Little Rats’ – and ‘Liars’
For a leader ─ any leader ─ political or otherwise ─ to be effective, he or she must command at least a modicum of respect from their staff. And the leader too must behave with their staff in a decent, if not respectful, way. But this is not how it’s working in Trump’s White House. Here, the rule-breaker is the president himself. To staff secretary Rob Porter, Trump says os Preibus (chief of staff and hence Porter’s immediate boss), “He’s like a little rat, he just scurries around. You don’t even have to pay attention to him. Just come talk to me.”
The same president, in a different situation, shouts at Porter, “I don’t want to talk to you. Get away from me.”
Cohn, who was president of Goldman Sachs before he joined Trump’s team, quit in protest when Trump decided to impose tariffs on imported steel and aluminum. (He fell victim to the ‘Americanism vs Globalism’ battle that Trump has launched.) When Cohn was a free man, this is how he described the American president: “He’s a professional liar.”
The book ends with a remark attributed to John Dowd, who quit as Trump’s personal lawyer defending him before Mueller: “You’re a f*ck*ng liar.”
Fear Factor: Trump Edition
Does Trump fear himself? And what’ll be the consequence of Trump challenging America’s “establishment”?
Of course, a leader should not be judged solely on the basis of obscenities in his language. History has known tyrants and war-mongers who spoke chaste words. Also, all leaders are human and, therefore, imperfect in some way or the other. The question is: Why is Trump the way he is? A more important question is: What might happen to Trump and America?
The title of Woodward’s book helps us probe the answer to the first question.
In a March 2016 interview Trump gave to the author (well before the presidential election), he said, “Real power is ─ (I don’t even want to use the word ) ─ fear.” Trump’s way of exercising power is by instilling fear in others.
But the more one psychologically reads about him ─ his misogyny, his bigotry, his bullying, his constant attempt to use others (including his colleagues) for his own purpose and discard them when they are useless, his failure to study complex issues and pay attention to diverse viewpoints, his lack of higher education, his lack of record of service, his long and by-now-well-documented record of law-breaking, and his firm conviction that he can win elections and rule America only by polarising American society ─ the more one is convinced that he himself is a victim of fear.
Trump is afraid of his own insecurities and inadequacies. And he thinks he can overcome them by creating an atmosphere of fear for others around him.
No wonder, almost his entire White House staff has quit ─ they’ve resigned or he has fired them ─ within two years of his incumbency.
Trump & the Establishment
The answer to the second question ─ What might happen to Trump and America? ─ needs some speculation and extrapolation from the narrative in Woodward’s book. Trump is, in some, not all ways, an anti-establishment politician. He wants to withdraw completely from the unwinnable 17-year-old war in Afghanistan (which is a good thing).
He wants America’s NATO allies, namely, South Korea, Japan and Saudi Arabia to pay for the billions his country spends on providing them security.
He thinks this money (also money he thinks he can get by increasing tariffs on imports from China and other countries) can be used for modernising America’s crumbling infrastructure and rebuilding its shrunken manufacturing base. USA’s GDP (nearly USD 20 trillion) may be the highest in the world, but its infrastructure (railways, highways, ports and airports) are no match to China’s. Even the Delhi airport is much better than New York’s JFK.
But Trump might come into serious trouble precisely because he is challenging some aspects of America’s entrenched establishment ─ and he is doing so by disparaging its icons (such as insulting military generals).
On page 226, Woodward writes, quoting a senior White House official: “The president proceeded to lecture and insult the entire group about how they didn’t know anything when it came to defense or national security. It seems clear that many of the president’s senior advisers, especially in the national security realm, are extremely concerned with his erratic nature, his relative ignorance, his inability to learn, as well as what they consider his dangerous views.”
Moving in Both Directions
Does this mean Trump is challenging and is disconnected with America’s ‘Deep State’? If so, he might get into serious trouble, irrespective of, and in addition to, the likely trouble from Mueller’s probe into his ─ and his team members’ ─ election-time irregularities.
Another JFK?
But this may not happen. For, Trump is quite capable of going back on his position just to stay in power. “I am always moving,” he said in one of his media interviews. “I’m moving in both directions.”
(The writer, an independent social activist, was an aide to former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in the PMO. He welcomes comments at sudheenkulkarni@gmail.com). He can also be reached at @SudheenKulkarni. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)
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