From the opening pages of veteran political reporter Bob Woodward’s book, Rage, President Donald Trump, through his own words, is seen as being totally in lockstep with the inflated image of himself that he, alone, has created. If one thinks that, in the wake of the Mueller report, the impeachment trial, the protests across the country, and the tragic scourge of the Corona virus pandemic that nothing worse could possibly be revealed, trust me, Rage shatters that belief. The reporter who, along with Carl Bernstein, blew the lid off of Watergate, and brought down the presidency of Richard Nixon, has crafted an expose where Donald Trump emerges as an out of touch, incompetent, and self-aggrandizing egomaniac. To put it another way, he is instantly recognizable as who America, and the world, has seen him as being over the course of his presidency. What I came away with from reading this book is that when all is said and done, Donald Trump makes Richard Nixon look like a choir boy.

Woodward sees the president through the eyes of both a journalist as well as a historian in posing a series of thoughtful and probing questions to the president. In the process, he has done a masterful job in opening a window into Donald Trump’s mind, and capturing how the man thinks. The view is frightening. For across its 426 pages, his series of the taped interviews, offers readers a shocking picture of a president who blows the whistle on himself by admitting that he downplayed, and basically lied to the country about the severity of an insidious virus that has claimed the lives of 200,000 Americans. The interviews that took place over a seven month timespan, from December 2019 to July 2020, paint a grim and graphic picture of a totally self-absorbed and out of touch president who is unfit to lead. A man who could have saved many lives had he only been honest with the American people and followed the advice of celebrated medical professionals such as Doctor Tony Fauci.

Being advised by the author that his words were being recorded, and that he wants the president to be honest with his answers, in a March 19, 2020 interview Donald Trump candidly admits to Woodward that, from Day One, he was not honest and forthright about the virus. “I always wanted to play it down. I still like playing it down because I don’t want to create a panic.” In that same session he goes on to say, on the record, that “plenty of young people” are vulnerable to the virus, “not just old people.” He also shares with Woodward his information that Covid is transmissible by air, and is “more deadly than even the most strenuous flu.” With this knowledge in his possession, all the while he was telling the American people that it was no more serious than the flu, that he was doing a great job in getting it under control, and that it would one day, like a miracle it would “just go away.” As I say, this is a book that is both shocking as well as scary.

Drawing on a wealth of factual evidence that includes notes, e-mails, personal diaries, and hours of interviews with former key administration officials, Rage also revisits the very early days of the Trump presidency. What is revealed in these sections of the book is that behind the scenes, and out of the public eye, former Secretary of Defense James Mattis, former Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, and former Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats, all key cabinet members in the Trump White House made valiant efforts to keep the country safe in the wake of Trump dismantling the normal and rational process of administering to the security of the United States. One simply can’t help feeling the shock and fear in reading a passage where Woodward writes that, that at one point, Secretary Mattis, a highly decorated Marine Corp General, was so concerned by the President’s lack of focus, inability to grasp basic issues, and consistent failure to act in a cogent and sensible manner, that he told National Intelligence Director Coats that the president was “dangerous and unfit,” that “The President has no moral compass.” Mattis also voiced, on the record, his belief that, “To him, a lie is not a lie. It’s just what he thinks. He doesn’t know the difference between the truth and a lie.” Another disturbing interview, from June 19th, is seen in Woodward’s candor in saying to the President that both he and Trump grew up in a setting of ‘white privilege,’ and asking Trump if he can “understand the anger and pain felt by black American’s?” Trump frames his response by mocking Woodward. “You really drank the Kool-Aid, didn’t you? Just listen to you. Wow! No, I don’t feel that at all.”

Having given President Donald Trump a public forum in which to reveal the person who he is at his core to America and the world beyond our shores, what readers see in the pages of this book is a man who is out of touch, dangerous, thoughtless, and simply incapable of being able to feel empathy for anyone other than himself.

In his closing thoughts, Woodward, a lifelong Republican, offers, “When his performance as president is taken in its entirety, I can only reach one conclusion: Trump is the wrong man for the job.” After reading this book, I am left with the sobering thought that, even within the very highest realm, truth is indeed stranger than fiction.

Paul Collins is a freelance writer from Southborough, Massachusetts.