Trump is a character born in the middle of the current bubble of populisms. Its political irruption is sheltered between the lurking shadow of political manipulation in social networks and the threat of Russian interference in that kind of massive coercion of wills that is post-truth.
The character is of great interest as an emblem of what is coming our way in this world of segmented information and hidden interests. Before this book by Bob Woodward, many other authors have already delved into the scope of a president like Trump for the most powerful country in the world. From Jorge Volpi with his «Against Trump«, To Vázquez Figueroa with«Goodbye, Mister Trump«. Always critical views to undertake the task of the final unmasking in the face of demagoguery and fear.
But to talk about Trump, the veteran journalist Bob Woodward, who has already uncovered the Watergate case, was missing. Woodward got down to work with his meticulousness and good work as a researcher, still freed from that current imperative of immediacy that ultimately allows us to undertake any task with more rest.
The final scenario that we find in this book is close to a profile of a megalomaniac president that we could all already guess in public interventions. But beyond the evidence, in Woodward's book we discover the puzzling threads behind a president who under his guise of a self-sufficient leader harbors advice that moves more toward the visceral than the diplomatic or consensual.
Through interviews with figures from circles very close to President Trump's innermost decision-making spheres, and relying on all kinds of reliable documentation, Woodward describes a bleak scenario in which arbitrariness, impulsiveness and the denial of everything that can logically take precedence over the most recalcitrant patriotism. Nothing better than the word Fear to title a volume about the first entirely populist presidency of a United States that looks out on old regimes previously lived in the most unstable Europe.
You can now buy the Fear book. Trump in the White House, a great investigative book by Bob Woodward, here: