Tag Archives: Rage

Donald Trump

‘Rage’ ends with … rage

By JOHN KANELIS / [email protected]

Bob Woodward crossed a line that reporters don’t usually dare to cross. He delivered a stinging rebuke of the subject of a book he has just written.

“Rage” chronicles Donald Trump’s deception — among other things — regarding the pandemic that has killed nearly 200,000 Americans. We hear from Trump’s own voice how he “downplayed” the pandemic so as to avoid “panic” among Americans. He undersold the threat even though he knew it would be a killer of many thousands of Americans.

Woodward, the legendary Washington Post reporter who, with Carl Bernstein, unraveled the Watergate scandal of the 1970s, couldn’t resist the temptation to offer a scathing indictment on Donald Trump at the very end of “Rage.”

“When his performance as president is taken in its entirety,” he intones, “I can only reach one conclusion: Trump is the wrong man for the job.”

OK. I happen to agree with him. So do millions of other Americans. To be fair, millions of other Americans believe Trump is the greatest president in history. I believe those folks are tragically mistaken.

Do I condemn or condone what Woodward wrote at the end of his latest book. I will condone it, but with a caveat: He no longer can be assigned to work on any aspect of a future story on Donald Trump being reported by the Washington Post.

Woodward said he consulted with his wife, Elsa, who edited his work. He talked to other editors, book publishers, colleagues at the Post. They all agreed that he had to keep that ending in the book.

Woodward told the truth as I have known it all along about Donald John Trump.

national news

Trump likes those authoritarians?

By JOHN KANELIS / [email protected]

Well, that Bob Woodward is revealing a lot about Donald Trump, much of it we knew, but much of it also is so shocking to hear coming directly from Trump himself.

Such as his admission to Woodward that he prefers dealing with authoritarian leaders. Of course, I use the word “authoritarian” with some caution. The term doesn’t come close to describing the heavy hand used in places such as North Korea, Russia, Turkey and the Philippines, all of which are governed by despots/tyrants/killers.

They also seem to curry favor with Trump, who in the past has praised them for their, um, “strong leadership” and other goofy terms of endearment.

Woodward is making the news/talk show circuit these days, talking up his new book “Rage,” which has revealed how Trump lied to Americans about what he learned in the initial stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. He downplayed the impact of the virus to us publicly, but stated to Woodward as early as February that we were facing a killer virus.

This authoritarian preference, though, seems to suggest a sort of projection of Trump onto the style employed by these other world leaders. It’s as if he wants to be just like them.

Except for this little restraint: The U.S. Constitution limits presidential power, meaning that Donald Trump cannot exert the kind of authority he seemingly would like to exert.

If only Trump would read the nation’s governing framework.

national news

Is POTUS really this stupid?

By JOHN KANELIS / [email protected]

Stupidity has reared its elaborately coiffed head in the White House.

I am trying to understand how Donald Trump could tell a reporter — on the record — that the coronavirus pandemic is destined to kill potentially thousands of Americans while telling the rest of us that the virus is “like the flu” and is “under control.”

So now the reporter, the legendary Bob Woodward, is about to publish a book , “Rage,” that chronicles the gloomy forecast Trump gave to him in February while POTUS at the same time is spinning an entirely different message to the American public.

I think some of us would call that a supreme act of “stupidity.” How in the name of candor does Donald Trump think he can get away with deliberately withholding valuable information from Americans while at that moment telling a reporter the actual truth about what he saw coming all along?

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden blames Trump directly for the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans. Their lives are lost and Trump is responsible, Biden has declared.

Joe Biden is correct. Donald Trump just admitted to telling us a deadly lie. As for whether Woodward should have reported what he learned in real time, that’s another subject for another time.

We have a case here of the president of the United States purposely ignoring the oath he took to protect Americans.

Astonishing!