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Like many of Woodward’s past works, this is less a cohesive book than a string of anecdotes, some hair-raising, some less so than they appear to be. Why is this? Woodward and Costa don’t go there.

Liz Cheney, who, on policy grounds, is as conservative as they come-are thrown out of the party’s leadership. Even now, few Republicans express qualms, in public anyway, about a return of Trump to office, and those who dare to do so-such as Rep. The Senate’s top Republican, Mitch McConnell, describes the Trump years as “so many Maalox moments.” Yet no Cabinet secretary, and fewer than a handful of congressional Republicans, moved to get this guy out of office through impeachment or the 25 th Amendment. Every one of you is fucked up! … Everybody get out of here!” In another scene, CIA Director Gina Haspel fears Trump is moving toward “a right-wing coup.” In still another, House Speaker Paul Ryan better understands Trump by reading a paper, sent to him by a doctor, on narcissistic personality disorder. In one of Woodward’s scenes, a Cabinet meeting where several officials oppose Trump’s desire to crush anti-police protests with active-duty soldiers, Trump responds by throwing a tantrum, screaming, “You’re all fucked up. Instead, he channels his anecdotes through the viewpoints of well-known characters, who tend to be either heroes (who often coincide with sources who have told him a lot) or villains (who usually haven’t). He subjects them to little, if any, analysis. The books themselves also follow a pattern, so consistent, over the past few decades, that it might be dubbed “Woodwardian.” The author amasses vast quantities of scoops, some of them extraordinary. His longtime employer, the Washington Post, previews a few of the book’s most breathless scoops the scoops are discussed (often inaccurately) on every TV news show by pub date, the book has rocketed to the top of the bestseller list. The seasonal routine has already hardened into ritual.
It’s happened in three of the past four Septembers, with each volume of his bluntly titled Trump trilogy- Fear (2018), Rage (2020), and now Peril (2021), the last co-authored with Robert Costa. General Assembly, and, in recent years, the appearance of a new Bob Woodward book. September is the month of renewed beginnings: the autumn equinox, the start of the school year, the U.N.
