The coronavirus bombshells in Bob Woodward’s new book, Rage, due out September 15, are so explosive that they have somewhat overshadowed other important parts of the book — for example, the veteran journalist/author’s reporting on President Donald Trump’s foreign policy decisions. And Woodward, according to the Guardian‘s Julian Borger, describes some of the ways in which Sen. Lindsey Graham, former Defense Secretary James Mattis, and others tried to rein Trump in on foreign policy.
Rage is based in part on a series of interviews that Woodward conducted with Trump from December 2019-July 2020. Woodward reports that on February 7, Trump told him that COVID-19 was five times “more deadly” than the flu — although he was publicly claiming, in February, that the novel coronavirus didn’t pose a major threat to the United States. Not surprisingly, Woodward’s damning coronavirus revelations have dominated cable news discussions of Rage. But other parts of Rage are important as well, and Borger notes some of Woodward’s reporting on Trump’s foreign policy decisions.
Four days before the January 3, 2020 drone strike that killed Iranian military Qasem Soleimani, Graham and Trump discussed Iran. Graham, according to Woodward, warned Trump that killing Soleimani would be a “giant step” and told the president, “How about hitting someone a level below Soleimani, which would be much easier for everyone to absorb?” Continue reading.