Thread by @PatBlanchfield

Yes, friends, I will speed-read and review the Woodward book for @nplusonemag as soon as it drops.

here we go folks, prayers up

sure why not

yeah you don't need to be a forensic philologist running a neural network decoding "lodestar" to credibly hypothesize that any of these ghouls wrote that worthless NYT Op-Ed

well fuck me

oh hell yes

update: Bob Woodward has a weird, recurrent fixation with peoples' posture, and an almost erotic transference with Mattis. Also, Steve Bannon tells him that Donald Trump was in "great physical shape" which is one helluva of a data point.

Steve Bannon, intellectual powerhouse, casually relating his own etymological prowess to Woodward, who relates it, trustingly

(quietly) Bob Woodward is a mediocre writer

just squirming at the misogyny that makes this scene possible and underwrites all of it

speaking of which, I am *extremely* curious where this material is coming from, since the only people named in the scene are Trump and Kellyanne Conway herself

first off: Folks.
second off: Woodward's practice of paraphrase - where he omits quotes from material that's clearly in the sources own words - is super confusing and dubious.

oh come the fuck on

biggest thing so far: Steve Bannon's ability to dupe every single major chronicle of the Trump administration so far - Woodward included - is simply amazing

yeah, it's clearly a case of "Bannon has to be a genius, because otherwise we media folks have all been idiots, and we would have to seriously reconsider our approach to the world." doesn't hurt that he's a media figure himself - and an eminently quotable one, too

two things:
(1) this scene is so stupid and tragic it's hilarious
(2) thank *god* we didn't get a Pence/Condi Rice ticket, if they'd won, just imagine the body count

by contrast: oh god, if only

woodward's mattis worship seems related to the bannon-dupery (did you know mattis reads BOOKS?). also, this bit here, just, damn - we are fuuuucked

yeah I'm not joking about woodward's erotic transference to mattis

"ramrod-straight" eh?

luv 2 sell money 2 make money

I'm a third of the way through, and I gotta say: it's pretty underwhelming

wolfe's book at least had a kind of sleazy readability to it. here, woodward's prose - which is serviceable at best - combines with his trademark servility and a kind of shellshock that These People Are Not Serious to produce something that is just not very engaging or revelatory

FINALLY

here's some actual newsworthy stuff: the CIA had multiple corroborating sources for the Russian hacking claims that Comey related to Trump in their first transition meeting

oh, okay

is there a General out there who Woodward *won't* describe as "ramrod-straight"? first mattis, now mccmaster too CC @rogerbellin

@rogerbellin HR McMaster is ... bald ...

again: this is a pretty mediocre book

just pathetic - and presumably this is graham relating the story, too

lindsey graham serves tea

jesus christ

jeeesus christ

of course Trump loves the idea of Horse Soldiers. of course. we live in the stupidest timeline

god if only #2

one thing's for sure: everyone in the white house deserves one another. also: sorry, Tiffany, you're not just second daughter in birth order, but in title too

in case you missed those classic Cold War vibes, it's nice to be reminded how the prospect of global war can hinge on some random fucker's BAC

the weirdest thing so far is how much Lindsey Graham seems to want Bob Woodward, and his readers, to know how often Lindsey Graham says "fuck"

TFW Jim Mattis, "who has a library of over 7000 books" and whom Bob Woodward has a sort of odd crush on, also refers to Iranian "raghead mullahs"

more on this in my review, but Woodward's fixation on secrecy and intelligence encapsulates so much of what is both frivolous and corrosive about his entire orientation and project

forget trump's personal cognitive shortcomings - we as a nation appear incapable of ever learning anything, ever

I am only half-way through with this book, Christ it's tedious

"The Woodward book is a scam. I don’t talk the way I am quoted. If I did I would not have been elected President."

yeah, about that

hell_site.jpg

reader, he stayed for another eight months

when Reince fucking Priebus says this about you ...

this, in its full painfulness, is about as purple as Woodward's prose gets, and it's also entirely unclear here if he's quoting or just paraphrasing Preibus

Trump, refusing to give ground to "political correctness" after his "many sides" statement post-Charlottesville. The source for the quote appears to be Rob Porter (who is a major source for Woodward, and whose abusive awfulness he buries at nearly the end of the book).

GIANT red flags here that woodward is leaning on porter's dubious self-reported quotes so credulously

yeah this getting really sketchy now

for the sentences that aren't in quotes here, it's impossible to tell what is Woodward's own assessment and what is him paraphrasing others. this is Not Good

yeah, this, though, does not feel hard to believe at all (the context is Cohn trying to resign in August '17, post Charlottesville)

jesus

and then he tells Cohn that resigning is literally "treason"

this is maddening. who is talking here? woodward? porter? both? the disembodied voice of the Seriousness and Norms? the muse of history?

yeah I'm gonna call bullshit on Rob Porter's self-reportage of his engaging in this lengthy Socratic dialogue with Trump, how on earth Woodward thinks this is credible is beyond me

pure, unadulterated bullshit

on the plus side, for those lamenting Steve Bannon's being uninvited to New Yorker IdeaCon or whatever it is, Woodward's apparent willingness to uncritically reproduce giant grafs of his sources' thoughts wholesale means plenty of primo Bannon content

here's Steve Bannon, noted reader of Hegel, doing dialectics!

not only does he come across worse than any other ghoul in this book besides Trump himself (which is a serious fucking achievement), Lindsey Graham apparently thinks giving this kind of material to Woodward reflects well on him, which is downright gobsmacking

after relying on Porter quite possibly more than any other single source, and as a voice of "moral obligation" (!) and "racial healing" (!!!) Woodward reveals this, in the second to last chapter, on page 336 of 357. what a joke

as w/ Porter on Trump, Woodward relies heavily on Dowd for quotes from a third party (Mueller), reproducing vast amounts of dialogue, in quotes, entirely uncritically, dialogue that ... shockingly ... makes Dowd look like the master of the conversation and smartest guy around

is bob woodward seriously this big a sucker?

this is a joke

and here it ends. spoiler: Trump isn't the only one. what a shitshow

OK friends, that was sixty four tweets and twelve hours of my life, and I fully intend to invoice Bob Woodward for both. I'm gonna catch a few hours and then write up a review, to further spread the pain. goodnight all!