CNN exclusive: details of Bob Woodward's next book on Trump
Following his hit 2018 book, "Fear," legendary investigative journalist Bob Woodward's new work on President Donald Trump, titled "Rage," will have surprising details about the behavior and making of President's decisions, according to sources familiar with the book.
Woodward, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, is known for his behind-the-scenes reporting and unprecedented access, but his second book on Trump promises to bring readers to the Oval Office like never before. According to multiple sources, the book has explosive accounts of Trump's thoughts and actions on national security, the coronavirus pandemic, the economic collapse, and the Black Lives Matter protests.
The release of "Rage" is scheduled for September 15th.
Jonathan Karp, CEO of Simon & Schuster, publisher of Woodward, also published the Trump bestsellers published earlier this year by former national security adviser John Bolton and Trump's niece, Mary Trump. Karp told CNN that "'Rage' is the most important book Simon & Schuster will publish this year. All voters should read it before November 3. "
In January, Trump revealed that he had sat down with Woodward for the next book, which came as a surprise after he harshly criticized "Fear." Woodward had repeatedly offered Trump the opportunity to be interviewed for that book, but Trump pretended that he had never received the requests.
According to various sources familiar with the book, Woodward conducted more than a dozen interviews with Trump for "Rage" at the White House, Mar-a-Lago and over the phone.
Woodward is known to record all of his interviews with the permission of his subjects and sources. CNN has learned that Woodward conducted hundreds of hours of interviews with other first-hand witnesses and, according to his editor, obtained "confidential notes, emails, diaries, calendars and documents," including 25 personal letters between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong. A.
In 2019, The Washington Post quoted White House officials as saying the correspondence between Trump and Kim were "love letters," and sources familiar with the book say the letters are "extraordinary." According to Simon & Schuster, in a letter "Kim describes the bond between the two leaders as if he came out of a 'fantasy movie'."
In a statement, Simon & Schuster said the book will be a "volatile and vivid" look at the "turmoil, contradictions and risks" of the Trump presidency.
CNN learned that "Rage" also reveals Trump's strong views on the country's former presidents and whether he believes he will win reelection in November.
The book's title comes from a quote during an interview Trump did with Woodward and Washington Post reporter Robert Costa in March 2016 during the election campaign.
"I get the rage out," Trump told Woodward and Costa. «I take out the rage. I have always done it. I don't know if that's an asset or a liability, but whatever it is, I do it.
That same 2016 interview inspired the title "Fear" for Woodward's 2018 book, when Trump said that "real power is, I don't even want to use the word, fear."
Woodward's first book on Trump made headlines for detailing the extraordinary measures taken by those in his inner circle to prevent him from acting on what they considered to be his most dangerous impulses.
In that book, then-White House Secretary John Kelly was quoted calling the presidential residence a "crazy town," then-Defense Secretary James Mattis said the president had the understanding of "a fifth or sixth grade student" and his former personal attorney John Dowd is quoted as calling Trump a "liar" and telling the president that he could not be interviewed by special counsel Robert Mueller or he would end up in an "orange suit."
