The author had to keep a tape recorder to hand at all times.

I’ve been a reporter almost 50 years and I never had an experience like thisĪs Woodward recalls of this “surreal time” starting last December, Trump initiated seven phone calls, sometimes at 10pm, sometimes at weekends. But there are moments when it seems his vanity is unable to resist and he is overly eager to impress “Bob”, a patrician white male three years his senior who was played by Robert Redford in All the President’s Men. Trump was piqued that he did not take part in Woodward’s previous book, Fear, which reached damning conclusions about his administration, so was determined to give his version of events for Rage. The ‘Monica Room’, Trump called it, and gave a knowing smirk.” ‘Don’t you hate it when it flies?’ He took me on a tour of his hideaway office, the spot where President Clinton had secretly met with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. “While we did, he explained he liked long neckties so the back could be tucked in the label. Before one 90-minute interview in the Oval Office, Woodward writes, Trump asked his photographer to take their picture. It will go down in history as one of the strangest relationships between interviewer and subject, between increasingly concerned citizen and blithely narcissistic commander-in-chief, unfolding through late-night phone calls – often initiated without warning by Trump – and in the White House itself. Bob Woodward, whose reporting on the Watergate break-in and cover-up with his colleague Carl Bernstein helped bring down Richard Nixon, found himself recording more than nine hours of conversation with Donald Trump about the coronavirus pandemic, race relations and myriad other topics for his latest book, Rage.

Bob woodward rage review