TITLE:
“Fear” Is a Book of Fiction Mixed with Real Events
AUTHORS:
Freddy A. Paniagua
KEYWORDS:
Recall, Dialogues, Fear, Memory, Sources, White House
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Political Science,
Vol.9 No.1,
December
29,
2018
ABSTRACT: Several
book reviews were published prior to the publication of “Fear: Trump in the White
House” on September 11, 2018, with emphasis on “terrifying scenes” (e.g., John
F, Kelly reportedly said that Trump is an “idiot”). These reviews, however, did
not discuss two major problems in “Fear,” namely, the contexts (i.e.,
environments, locations, settings, etc.) in which dialogues in “Fear” occurred
and the probability that Woodward’s “sources” were present in such contexts, as well as the probability that such
“sources” remembered and then reported verbatim extensive dialogues between two
or more individuals in “Fear,” because of the limited capacity of the human short-term memory. This commentary suggests that Woodward did not “fabricate”
the contents of “Fear,” as claimed by some in the White House, but argues that
Woodward honestly believed what his “sources” reported to him without
questioning such “sources” regarding the two major problems in “Fear.”