Trump forgets which book he claimed he read all of last night, invents a new one to cover it up
President Trump is notorious for complete and utter disdain for reading and for books in general. Multiple authors have alleged that Trump won’t even read one-page memos or any of his intelligence briefings, and his own remarks back those allegations up, as he once bragged that “I like bullets or I like as little as possible. I don’t need, you know, 200-page reports on something that can be handled on a page. That I can tell you.”
This is why it’s very hard to believe that Trump read the entirety of veteran journalist Bob Woodward’s new book, “Rage,” in just one night, as he alleged he did this morning in an interview with FOX and Friends. “I actually got to read it last night. I read it very quickly and it was very boring,” said Trump of the 466-page book, which he definitely has not read a word of.
Sowing further doubt on his claims is his inability to distinguish between the authors Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. But rather than simply admit he mixed the two up, Trump claimed that actually he had also read a Carl Bernstein book recently.
These rambling incoherent hopped up calls do not help the President pic.twitter.com/b2KewygZYL
— Acyn Torabi (@Acyn) September 15, 2020
Just one week ago, the President bragged that he would almost “definitely” not read the new book because he didn’t “have time” to read it, possibly because he’s too busy watching nine straight hours of FOX News programming and tweeting about all the things that he sees.
“I don’t know if the book is good or bad. I have no idea. Probably — almost definitely won’t read it because I don’t have time to read it. But I gave it a little bit of a shot. Sounds like it’s not going to be good.”
Rage is the latest of the interminable conveyor belt of behind-the-scenes tell-all books about the dysfunction and the chaos of the Trump administration; the most alarming revelations in this one include the president admitting to downplaying the threat posed by the coronavirus crisis, saying that “That’s a very tricky one. That’s a very delicate one. It’s also more deadly than even your strenuous flus…You know? So, this is deadly stuff.”
Dismissing the allegations as “very boring” is all the president can do to try and discredit the author, who has his words recorded on tape. But it’s very telling that Trump is feeling so nervous about it that he feels the need to pretend that he’s read the book — and that he can’t even remember who wrote the book he pretended to read.
