Rage Summary

Bob Woodward’s *Rage*, published in September 2020, is the second of his three books on Donald Trump’s presidency, following *Fear*. Built on hundreds of hours of interviews—including 17 on-the-record sessions with Trump himself, plus conversations with Jared Kushner, Mike Pompeo, Dan Coats, James Mattis, and Anthony Fauci—the book traces the administration from 2017 into mid-2020. Its narrative spine is the president’s relationship with the national security apparatus, particularly the tension between Trump’s instinctive distrust of alliances and intelligence and the advisers who tried to manage him. Woodward gives extended attention to the North Korea nuclear diplomacy, the abandoned Singapore and Hanoi summits, and the president’s private assessments of Kim Jong Un. A recurring thread concerns the Russia investigation, where Woodward details Mattis and Coats quietly resisting or deflecting presidential demands they considered dangerous. The book’s later chapters turn to the coronavirus pandemic, reconstructing early warnings from officials like Fauci and Robert Redfield and Trump’s own recorded admission to Woodward in February 2020 that he knew the virus was “deadly” while publicly downplaying it. The title reflects Woodward’s argument that Trump’s anger—at institutions, allies, the press, and constraints on his power—drove key decisions. The book also documents the president’s attacks on the Justice Department, his treatment of immigration policy, and the firing of officials who resisted him. Widely covered upon release, *Rage* sold over a million copies in its first week and became a primary source for later accounts of the pandemic response and the administration’s internal fractures.