I get the impression Trump is a foolish, incompetent, and unscrupulous President, but not a particularly evil one. The picture Woodward conveys is that Trump is mean, intellectually challenged, vindictive, petty and in way over his head, but not necessarily a traitor or a criminal. He has been used and outsmarted by the Russians, (and the Chinese will take him apart!), but blackmailed or compromised is probably overstating the case. In fact, I’m convinced now that when we finally learn the full extent of Putin’s involvement with the President, Trump’s enemies are going to be disappointed about what is revealed. We can’t blame the Russians for The Donald. They didn’t make him do anything, they were just able to exploit what he freely offered them.

Even in the areas where he has recognized genuine national problems and shortcomings, he has been unable to put together any meaningful strategy to deal with them. His major problems are his total lack of empathy and his inability to tell the truth, and of course, a profound ignorance of how the world really works. Like too many men of business, Trump knows the price of everything but the value of nothing. He simply cannot see the world through anyone elses eyes but his own.

To sum it up, Trump isn’t the monster I thought he was, but he has no business being President, either. I recognize that is what I get from Bob Woodward, who is a keen and experienced observer, but that it is not necessarily the whole story, either. By just absorbing Woodward, and comparing it to what I already know, my initial impressions of Trump are not fundamentally changed. What you see is what you get.

Its a depressing book. I could handle the thought of an evil genius, or a mastermind of crime and malice. But that’s not what I see here. I just see someone who has no business being where he is, someone who will fuck things up no matter how hard he tries to do the right thing.

I don’t think Mueller is going to find any smoking gun for us, or any silver bullets. He may be able to put together a case that will force Trump out of office, but it will only convince those who already want that. We will remain a nation divided after he’s gone. Donald Trump is not the cause of America’s problems. He’s just a symptom of them. He is the inevitable result of the fears of his base, and the greed of his supporting elites. Its funny, “greed and fear”, traditionally, the basic emotions that drive the stock market. Somehow, it seems fitting for someone who styles himself our first entrepreneur president. Unlike Obama, or even Bush and Clinton before him, he wasn’t ever able to see past his immediate allies and temper them with knowledge of the past or some vision of the future.

I know Robert is reading the book and I’m very interested in his take on it. Am I missing something? I feel like I have, but I just can’t put my finger on it.