WASHINGTON – Only a man who is deeply worried about his own strength would talk as much as Donald Trump does about the danger of appearing weak.
That’s my biggest takeaway from reading “Fear,” Bob Woodward’s new book about the Trump presidency. The scoops were mostly revealed last week. What’s fresh is Trump’s repeated, obsessive talk about weakness during his first year in office.
Woodward’s recounting of Trump’s conversations is a study in character, or lack of it. The president’s vanity, pettiness and meanness of spirit were evident already in his tweets and public statements. But here is the annotated version, as told to Woodward by Trump’s aides, replete with enough “F-bombs” to stock an arsenal of profanity.
When Trump is on the verge of doing something conciliatory – apologizing for a racist or sexist comment, for example – he stops himself for fear that it will show weakness. Trump (prodded by his Iago-like deputy macho-man, Steve Bannon) keeps insisting that he must stay strong, regardless of how unprincipled it may seem.
Woodward’s narrative of the weakness phobia begins at the low point of the campaign, with the revelation of the “Access Hollywood” tape in which Trump boasts about grabbing women’s genitals. His aides have written a statement in which Trump would concede, “My language was inappropriate, not acceptable for a president.” But Trump protests: “I can’t do this. This is bull–. This is weak. You guys are weak.”