Editor’s Note: The story below contains explicit language.
CNN
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The arrival of a new Bob Woodward book has a well-established choreography; enterprising reporters get hold of copies of the heavily embargoed volume a week or so ahead of its publication date and mine it for the news it contains.
Both CNN and The Washington Post, where Woodward retains the honorific title of associate editor, covered the news in the latest book, “War,” last week. And news there was: At the height of the pandemic, President Donald Trump sent Russian President Vladimir Putin a secret shipment of Covid-19 testing equipment, and since he has left office, Trump has called Putin as many as seven times.
Ahead of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, President Joe Biden blamed former President Barack Obama for not doing more to counter the Russian leader when he invaded Crimea in 2014, telling a friend, “That’s why we are here. We fucked it up. Barack never took Putin seriously.”
Putin had a heated call with Biden in the run-up to Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, in which the Russian president threatened a nuclear war. Later, Biden’s national security team assessed there was a 50% chance Putin might use a tactical nuclear weapon during the Ukraine conflict. It is worth noting that back in March, CNN’s Jim Sciutto had similar detailed reporting about Putin’s possible use of a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine in late 2022.
As has been the case for previous Woodward books, those who don’t come out well from his reporting publicly dismiss it. The Trump campaign said: “None of these made-up stories by Bob Woodward are true.”
The deluge of publicity that precedes the publication of Woodward’s book ensures that the book shoots to the top of the bestseller lists before Woodward does any media himself. Even before “War” goes on sale Tuesday, it’s already No. 5 on Amazon’s bestseller list, so it could also be on the way to being Woodward’s 16th No. 1 New York Times bestseller, an astonishing record of success.
Woodward has a penchant for one-word titles for his books about Trump: “Peril,” “Rage” and “Fear.” He has also written extensively about the post-9/11 wars in books such as “Bush at War” and “Obama’s Wars.” So how does “War” stack up against those books, and what are its big themes?
At the heart of “War,” Woodward reports about how Biden’s national security team handled three wars: in Afghanistan, the Ukraine conflict, and the war in Gaza, now in its second year, which has embroiled the Middle East in a widening conflict.
Like Woodward’s several other books about war, the front lines of the conflicts he covers are not on the battlefields but in the Oval Office and the White House Situation Room. I reviewed White House visitor logs showing that Robert Woodward (his legal name) visited the White House more than two dozen times from December 2022 to April 2024, a period that “War” covers in detail.
Woodward rarely strays far from this apex of American power. As a result, “War” is not suffused with the sound of gunfire, but the ringing of cell phones as senior Biden officials get on secure conference calls.