Woodward, now 76, took the fuss around Fear in his stride. Nearly 50 years have passed since Woodward and Carl Bernstein took down a president, a story they chronicled in the books All the President’s Men and The Final Days. On Sunday, the Post’s Josh Dawsey duly reported that “Trump has also told skeptical senior aides to cooperate with Woodward this time.” When Fear came out, Sarah Sanders, then White House press secretary, claimed its sources were mostly “former disgruntled employees”. Trump greeted Woodward’s book with derision, calling it “a piece of fiction” and a “con of the public” and its author a “liar” with “phoney sources”.īut the president is nothing if not changeable and on Sunday, one of Woodward’s chief competitors, Maggie Haberman of the New York Times, tweeted that Trump has “met with Woodward at least twice for his second book Woodward, a legend, is now ‘very good’.”

Photograph: APįear came out in September 2018, eight months after Michael Wolff’s explosive Fire and Fury set off a Trump book publishing boom that has never truly died down.

'Everything I’ve read about suggests that he has once again put together a mosaic of multiple impressions and recollections that add up to an indisputable truth: in this case, that Trump is utterly, disgracefully, dangerously unfit for the job he’s got.Fear: Trump in the White House. 'Woodward has always had his detractors, but there’s no question that he is relentless in his research and incredibly effective in getting people - lots of people - to talk, and in great detail,' Jeff Shesol, a speechwriter in the Clinton White House and an author of political nonfiction books.

And he's detailed the good, the bad and the ugly of presidential decision-making without regard for the party or political agenda of the commander in chief since before many White House aides were born. He didn't turn his back on Trump like Manigault-Newman or blend into the background of a new White House staff like Wolf. Typically, that wouldn't be a huge problem for a president who has been able to cast past books and news reports as the work of people with axes to grind, money to make or simply a bias against him.īut Woodward? He's wealthy enough that he doesn't need another best-seller to sustain himself. Both of them commented in written statements, rather than rushing to cameras to defend their honor or the president's. But neither he nor Mattis dared to launch a real counterattack on Woodward, who records most of his interviews.

Woodward book fear