蘑菇视频

Sep 10, 2018 4 min read

Bob Woodward doesn’t seem to have an axe to grind. He just writes books.

The legendary Watergate journalist has authored or co-authored 18 books, and a dozen of them have become No. 1 national bestsellers.

Last week, juicy tidbits from his latest book, “Fear: Trump in the White House,” were released, and they sent Donald Trump into a flurry of hissy-fits.

You’d probably get a little perturbed, too, if some of the people you hired are being quoted in a book as calling you an “idiot,” or opining that you have the temperament of a “fifth or sixth grader.”

Those are just part of the details in Woodward’s 448-page book, which includes the supposed assessment by White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, that the place has become “crazytown.”

Soon after excerpts from the book were revealed, Trump responded with a torrent of tweets designed to discredit Woodward, and his book.

Those tweets sort of substantiate the book’s thesis: that the President of the United States of America is a thin-skinned, short-tempered, immature brute, who’s more concerned with his self-image, than in the good of the country he’s sworn to serve.

By now, that probably doesn’t shock many Americans.

There are some wild claims in that book.

Trump is quoted as having called long-suffering Attorney General Jeff Sessions, “mentally retarded,” and a “dumb southerner” behind his back.

Trump responded to that claim with a tweet.

“I said NEITHER, never used those terms on anyone…” he wrote.

There’s something they call the internet.

On that thing they call the internet, there’s this thing they call Google.

On that thing they call Google, you can easily find the times that Trump has called people “retarded.”

It’s just that simple.

Try it.

It’s also hard to believe that Gary Cohn, Trump’s former chief economic adviser, stole a letter from the president’s desk that was awaiting his signature.

According to the book, Cohn was merely trying to “protect the country,” from Trump’s plan to withdraw from a trade deal with South Korea.

If Trump was boiling about Bob Woodward’s latest handiwork, he was in full meltdown the following day.

An unnamed person who claims they’re a “senior official” in the Trump administration penned a blistering thousand-word op-ed piece in the New York Times.

What took Bob Woodward 448 pages, that “senior official” did in a few paragraphs.

That official called into question Trump’s suitability to inhabit the highest office in the land.

While Woodward depended on quotes from key insiders. The writer of that op-ed piece is an insider.

They’re living the dream – and the nightmare.

They claim they’re trying desperately to dissuade the president from his “misguided impulses.”

And they complain that Trump’s leadership style is, “impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective.”

In other words, well, there are no other words.

OK, I guess there are a few more.

The writer/senior official questions the president’s “erratic behavior,” his “instability,” and his occasional “reckless decisions.”

It took a couple of hours for Trump to tweet his responses to the latest attack on his presidential worthiness.

“TREASON?” was his first tweet.

Treason is a mighty strong word, don’t you think?

Whoever that senior official is, they’ve not plotted with a foreign power to overthrow the government.

You would have to look far and wide to find a person who’d claim the president just doesn’t use enough hyperbole.

He’s the master of overstatement.

His next tweet was a real doozy.

“If the GUTLESS anonymous person does indeed exist, the (New York) Times must, for National Security purposes, turn him/her over to government at once!” he wrote.

Get a load of that.

I can imagine Trump would like to put the culprit/senior official into leg irons and administer 40 lashes.

He just doesn’t understand that it doesn’t work that way.

Trump may believe that the senior official is a threat to national security.

That is precisely what that senior official is saying about Trump.

Not in a tweet, but what amounts to in an eyebrow raising, thousand-word plea for help.

Edward A. Owens is a multi-Emmy Award winner, former reporter and anchor for Entertainment Tonight and 20-year TV news veteran. Email him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net.