Rage

Rage is a nonfiction book by journalist Bob Woodward, published in 2020. It chronicles the Trump administration from the assembly of its national security team in late 2016 through the converging crises of the coronavirus pandemic, economic collapse, and racial unrest in mid-2020.

The book opens on January 28, 2020, during a Top Secret President's Daily Brief. National Security Adviser Robert O'Brien warned Trump that the coronavirus "will be the biggest national security threat you face in your presidency." Deputy National Security Adviser Matt Pottinger, a former Wall Street Journal reporter who had covered the 2003 SARS outbreak in China, supported O'Brien, citing contacts in China and Hong Kong who compared the virus to the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic. Despite these warnings, Trump reassured the public the risk was low. In a private February 7 call with Woodward, he called the virus "more deadly than even your strenuous flus" and "deadly stuff." On March 19, he admitted: "I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down, because I don't want to create a panic."

Woodward traces how Trump assembled his national security team. Retired Marine General James Mattis agreed to serve as secretary of defense despite opposing Trump's criticisms of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and his support for torture. Rex Tillerson, the CEO of ExxonMobil, accepted the secretary of state nomination after securing three promises from Trump, including freedom to choose his own staff and a guarantee against public disputes. Senator Dan Coats, a devout Indiana Republican, accepted the position of Director of National Intelligence (DNI) at Vice President Mike Pence's urging despite reservations about Trump's character.

All three quickly discovered the difficulty of serving Trump. Coats found the president's behavior in intelligence briefings unpredictable and was troubled by Trump's refusal to trust the intelligence community. Trump publicly undermined his advisers, tweeting that Tillerson was "wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man" while Tillerson pursued diplomatic channels with North Korea. Tillerson was further sidelined when Trump assigned his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, sweeping foreign policy responsibilities including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and trade with China.

Woodward devotes significant attention to the North Korea crisis. By March 2017, Trump adopted a "maximum pressure" policy combining sanctions, military posturing, and covert CIA preparations. Throughout 2017, North Korea conducted escalating missile tests, including its first intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the American homeland. Mattis carried delegated authority to shoot down any missile headed for the United States and was consumed by the moral weight of potential nuclear conflict. "No person has the right to kill a million people as far as I'm concerned," he told associates, "yet that's what I have to confront."

The situation pivoted in early 2018 when South Korean President Moon Jae In relayed North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's willingness to denuclearize and meet Trump. CIA Director Mike Pompeo traveled secretly to Pyongyang, where Kim said he did not want his children "to carry nuclear weapons on their backs the rest of their lives." The June 2018 Singapore summit produced a short agreement committing North Korea to "work toward complete denuclearization." The two leaders exchanged 27 letters of personal warmth, with Kim writing in near-romantic prose. A second summit in Hanoi in February 2019 collapsed, and on June 30, 2019, Trump became the first sitting U.S. president to cross into North Korea. No substantive denuclearization was achieved.

Woodward also covers the Mueller investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. After Trump fired FBI Director James Comey in May 2017, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed Robert Mueller as special counsel. Mueller's report, issued after 22 months, neither concluded that Trump committed a crime nor exonerated him. Attorney General William Barr released a summary that Trump seized on as "complete exoneration." Mueller privately complained that Barr's letter "did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance" of his work but took no action.

Mattis resigned in December 2018 after Trump tweeted that the U.S. was withdrawing from Syria, two weeks after Mattis had secured commitments from 13 allied defense ministers to continue fighting ISIS. His message to Trump: "You're going to have to get the next secretary of defense to lose to ISIS. I'm not going to do it." Coats's tenure ended when Trump tweeted his replacement in July 2019. All three officials, including Tillerson, who was fired by tweet, concluded independently that Trump posed a danger to the country.

The book's second half chronicles the pandemic. On New Year's Eve 2019, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Robert Redfield saw the first report of unexplained pneumonia in Wuhan, China. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government's top infectious disease expert, reacted with alarm. Redfield requested access for American investigators, but China refused. On January 31, Trump approved travel restrictions on China after Fauci, Redfield, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, O'Brien, and Pottinger all recommended the action, though Trump later claimed exclusive credit.

Throughout February, Trump minimized the threat, telling audiences the virus would disappear "when it gets a little warmer." Fauci and Redfield privately warned governors the outbreak would get "much, much worse before it gets better." The first U.S. death occurred on February 29. Events accelerated in March: The World Health Organization (WHO) declared a pandemic on March 11, colleges closed, the NCAA canceled basketball tournaments, and the stock market plunged. On March 15, Fauci and White House coronavirus response coordinator Deborah Birx presented Trump with "15 Days to Slow the Spread" guidelines, effectively shutting down the country.

In their March 19 interview, Trump acknowledged the virus's severity but admitted to deliberately downplaying the threat. Senator Lindsey Graham, a close Trump ally, privately warned that Trump's opponent was not Joe Biden but the coronavirus: "If you fuck it up, there's nothing you can do to get reelected." By mid-April, Trump pushed to reopen, tweeting "Liberate Minnesota," "Liberate Michigan," and "Liberate Virginia" in contradiction of his own guidelines. Fauci privately described Trump's leadership as "rudderless." By the end of April, more than 50,000 Americans had died.

The killing of George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, by a Minneapolis police officer on May 25 triggered protests across the country. On June 1, police cleared mostly peaceful protesters from Lafayette Square near the White House; minutes later, Trump walked to the nearby St. John's Church and posed holding a Bible. Mattis broke his silence, writing that Trump "is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people, does not even pretend to try." Graham warned Trump that choosing division over unity would cost him the election.

In their final interviews in June and July 2020, Woodward presses Trump on race and white privilege. Trump responded: "You really drank the Kool-Aid, didn't you?" He insisted he had "done more for the Black community than any president in history with the possible exception of Lincoln." He gave himself an "A" on the virus but called it "incomplete." Hours later, at his first Coronavirus Task Force briefing in three months, Trump shifted tone: "It will probably, unfortunately, get worse before it gets better."

Woodward concludes that "the dynamite behind the door" Trump once warned about turned out to be Trump himself. Mattis, Tillerson, and Coats, all conservatives or apolitical figures who answered the call to serve, each departed concluding that Trump posed an unstable threat to the country. Comparing Trump unfavorably to Franklin Roosevelt, who shared bad news honestly in his fireside chats and laid out a clear strategy, Woodward delivers his final judgment: "Trump is the wrong man for the job."