Unlike Nixon’s desperate bid to conceal his artifice, the biggest revelation in “Rage” comes from Trump positively boasting about his artifice, with his unselfconscious assertion that he intentionally played down the seriousness of coronavirus at the beginning of the pandemic to avoid public panic.
No matter. Trump was bested by the Woodward techniques no less than Nixon was. Those techniques rest on Woodward’s understanding of five types of power.
