Overnight, as the networks focused on the exciting election results and more confirmation of Trump’s declining polls, Trump finally unleashed the expected Twitter tirade against Bob Woodward’s new book—and then he woke up and continued. Woodward’s new book, Fear, doesn’t hit the shelves until September 11, but as soon as snippets began to leak into the pages of the Washington Post and segments of CNN, it was clear that it would generate a Trump-nami of denial. Filled with tales of Trump’s staggering incompetence and aides who have scrambled daily to keep him from mixing up the “summon coke” button from the one that blows up the world, the book seemed designed to involve Trump in a long, fuming, never-going-to-let-this-go response. In large part, that’s because the book reveals, not a secret Trump, but the Trump everyone already expected.
The Trump that seems obvious to even the most casual observer. The ineffectual ego monster who flails from topic to topic just making shit up with no concern about what he’s said or done so long as the camera remains focused his way. Woodward’s book isn’t a revelation. It’s just a confirmation.
By Tuesday afternoon, the White House had produced a blistering response in which they refuted a single word of the book and demonstrated that none of it could be true because … space force. That’s one word down, 153,211 to go.
But on Tuesday night, alt-Reich media came to Trump’s rescue, with both Brietbart and the ludicrous Daily Caller running bits “debunking” the book. However, a closer look at those articles shows that they were both little more than repetitions of an earlier statement made by Secretary of Defense James Mattis. And Mattis statement refutes … nothing, really. The Mattis statement, which was also tweeted by Trump, opens with disowning “the contemptuous phrases” about Trump “attributed to me in Woodward’s book” and includes a line about “reading fiction” and a backhand at “anonymous sources.” The response then goes on to decidedly not refute stories from Woodward’s book, such as the one in which Donald Trump calls John McCain a coward for his actions in Vietnam. Mattis’s statement really boils down to a hollow “of course I would never say anything to disrespect the commander in chief.”
So far, the best Donald Trump has been able to do in fighting back against the book is throw up the same weak, hand-waving statements that really do nothing to dent the theme behind Woodward’s tome. But as Axios reports, that may be about to change.
White House officials have finally obtained a copy and are now poring over it, but as the day rolled on yesterday, staff met to discuss strategies to push back — all while President Trump’s mood worsened and TV coverage shifted from Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation hearings to the book.
Please. This is the Trump White House. They are pouring over it.
So expect today to be The Day of the Nitpicker, with Trump either taking to Twitter, or pushing Sarah Sanders out to make a statement every time someone comes across a sentence where either Woodward got something wrong, or someone at the White House is forced to deny something that they actually said. Expect a lot more of the latter.
Trump’s morning Twitter attack has been limited so far, but he has managed to slip in a threat to make it easier for politicians to file libel suits, a threat he’s made in the past. Which might actually be a good thing—if it meant that Trump had to appear in court and testify to what he said.