Bob Woodward says his interviews with Donald Trump show how “dangerous” Trump can be

Some 50 years ago, along with his Washington Post colleague Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward broke some of the biggest political stories in history, reporting on the Watergate break that ultimately led to President Richard Nixon’s resignation from office.

Today, Woodward continues to produce impactful White House reporting. In an opinion essay for the Post on Sunday, Woodward wrote, “In more than 50 years of reporting, I have never released the raw interviews or the full transcripts of my work. But after re-listening to the 20 interviews I conducted with President Donald Trump during his final year as CEO, I decided to take the unusual step of releasing them. I was struck by how Trump pounded into my ears in a way that the printed page could not capture.

The essay is adapted from Woodward’s audiobook – “The Trump Tapes: Bob Woodward’s Twenty Interviews with President Donald Trump” – which comes out this week. In total, Woodward had 16 phone calls with Trump, a total of 20 interviews, totaling eight hours of conversations. Woodward eventually wrote a trilogy of books about Trump before releasing this collection of interviews.

Woodward wrote: “I realized that I was caught up in the mess of the Trump presidency. An informal practice developed. Knowing that he could and would call me at any time, I started leaving recording devices around my house. Knowing that I could call him and ask about anything – including the events of the day – was an unprecedented reporting opportunity. It was also unnerving. Trump has become the main focus of my life for nine months.

As for the tapes, Woodward wants people to hear Trump and his answers to some of Woodward’s questions. For example, Woodward asked Trump about the summer of 2020, when COVID-19 was wreaking havoc around the world and in the United States. Woodward asked, “Was there a moment in all of this in the last two months where you said to yourself, ‘Ah, this is the leadership test of your life?’

Trump said, “No.”

Woodward now writes: “On the printed page his ‘no’ reads simply, a simple declaration. Now listen to the audio of that exchange. This “no” is confident, dismissive, full of self-confidence. It leaves no doubt as to the finality of his judgement. That “no” takes him away from taking responsibility. The sound has extraordinary emotional power, immediacy and authenticity. A listener is brought into the room. It’s a completely different experience than reading Trump’s words or listening to excerpts of his interviews on television or on the Internet.”

Woodward goes on to write, “In The Trump Record, I share my personal journalistic journey through the eight hours of interviews. I provide commentary on more than 200 points in the audiobook, expressly offering my own reactions, hesitations, conclusions, and explanations of my method of gathering and confirming information.

“CBS Sunday Morning” spoke with Woodward on Sunday. Woodward revealed the only time Trump gave him no comment. While Trump was still president, Woodward asked Trump about rumors that he would refuse to leave the White House if he lost the 2020 election. Trump told him, “Well, I’m not — I don’t even want to comment on that, Bob. I don’t want to comment on that right now. Hey Bob, I got all these people, I’ll talk to you later tonight!’

At the end of his book “Rage,” also about Trump, Woodward writes that Trump is “singularly unfit to be president.” After listening to all the tapes again, Woodward told John Dickerson of CBS Sunday Morning, “Trump was the wrong person for the job. I realize now, two years later, the whole January 6 uprising leads me to the conclusion that he’s not just the wrong man for the job, but he’s dangerous and he’s a threat to democracy and he’s a threat to the presidency because he doesn’t understand the basic duties, that come with this position.

On the subject of Trump, Liz Cheney — the Republican congresswoman from Wyoming and co-chair of the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot — said the Republican Party would “fall apart” if Trump is the party’s 2024 presidential nominee. She made these comments about Sunday’s “Meet the Press” on NBC.

Cheney told moderator Chuck Todd, “I think the party either needs to come back from where we are right now, which is a very dangerous and toxic place, or the party is going to fall apart and there’s going to be a new conservative party that’s going to rise up. And if Donald Trump is the nominee of the Republican Party, the party will collapse and a conservative party will rise in its place.

Todd asked Cheney if she would consider running for president, but Cheney did not commit one way or the other. Todd then asked, “There are some people who suggest that if you’re a third-party candidate, that’s going to be enough to stop Trump.”

Cheney said, “Well, we’ll do whatever it takes, like I said. He will not be president of the United States again.

As for the Jan. 6 panel, Todd asked Cheney what crimes she thought Trump had committed. Cheney said: “I think there are numerous criminal offenses — I don’t want to stand before the committee — but we’re looking at them. And I think it’s very important for everybody to recognize that when you’re faced with a set of facts, when you’re faced with such clear evidence, and some have said, well, you know, we don’t know what his intent was. Maybe he really thought he had won the election. In fact, we know this is not the case. We presented testimony that showed he admitted he had lost. But even if, even if he thought he won, you might not send an armed mob to the Capitol, you can’t sit back for 187 minutes and refuse to stop the attack while it’s underway. You cannot send a tweet that incites further violence. So we’ve been very clear about a number of different crimes that are probably at issue here. If the Department of Justice finds that they have the evidence that we believe is there and they decide not to prosecute. I think this really calls into question whether or not we are a nation of laws.

Jennifer Valentino-DeVries and Steve Eder of the New York Times published a new article: “For Trump backers in Congress, ‘Devil’s terms’ help rally voters.”

The Times has been investigating partisan language for the past 10 years. They write: “Analysis of tweets, Facebook ads, bulletins and congressional speeches—a total of more than 3.7 million items—relied heavily on natural language processing, a technique that uses software to extract information from large amounts of text . The Times counted words that academic research has associated with controversial political content, as well as those identified by linguists and computer scientists as being used in polarizing ways – “fascist” and “socialist”, for example “far right” and “far left .'”

The result?

The Times wrote: “Republican representatives have stepped up such rhetoric since former President Donald J. Trump took office, analysis found. In the year and a half since the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, Republicans, on average, used divisive words and phrases more than twice as often as Democrats in tweets and six times as often in emails to voters. At the forefront of this polarization are Republicans who voted to reject the Electoral College results that cemented Mr. Trump’s defeat last year. A recent Times investigation revealed how these lawmakers helped engrave the myth of the stolen election into party orthodoxy. Now, a Times analysis shows that the language of the 139 dissenting members was significantly more hostile than that of other Republicans and Democrats. According to them, those who oppose them are not only wrong about certain policies, but also hate their country.

None of this is surprising if you pay attention to the news and social media, but it’s troubling nonetheless. Please take the time to read this important story.

During an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union” last week, Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Cary Lake, a former local news anchor, did not commit to accepting the results of the upcoming election. She was asked three times by CNN’s Dana Bash if she would accept the results, and the only answer she gave was, “I’m going to win the election and I’m going to accept this result.”

The same theme came up again during Lake’s interview Sunday with ABC’s Jonathan Carl on “This Week.” Lake told Karl: “I will accept the results of this election if we have a fair, honest and transparent election. Absolutely, 100%. As long as it’s fair, honest and transparent.”

Lake has repeatedly made unsubstantiated claims about the 2020 election. She did this again with Karl and then said she wanted to talk about other topics, to which Karl replied, “We talked about a whole bunch of other things.” He later added: “I didn’t ask you about 2020. You brought it up.”

That was solid work by Carl.

Dominion Voting Systems CEO John Poulos was interviewed by Anderson Cooper for “60 Minutes” on Sunday nights. Dominion has filed eight lawsuits seeking more than $10 billion from Fox News and other conservative news networks and individuals. Dominion claims they defamed the company by repeatedly making false allegations that Dominion’s voting machines rigged the election against Donald Trump. (Fox said it was simply reporting claims made by Trump and his representatives.)

Poulos told Cooper, “People were put in harm’s way. Their families were put in danger. Their lives have been turned upside down and all because of lies. It was a very clear calculation that they knew were lies. And they repeated them and approved them.”

Poulos told Cooper the harassment continues, saying, “I’m not willing to sit here and say this is something that happened 18 months ago. This is something that continues to happen every day for us. Last Friday we had a locked office. Two days before that I was on the phone with one of our employees who is a mother of two. Um, very upset and crying – it’s hard to talk about.’

Asked what happened, Poulos said: “A very disgusting death threat in detail … on her personal cell phone.”

Atlantic’s David French with “Hershel Walker and the Plight of the Real Conservative Voter.”

FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver with “Why I tell my friends the Senate is a toss-up.”

“CBS Sunday Morning” features F1 star Lewis Hamilton “Lewis Hamilton to increase diversity in F1 racing.”

Got feedback or advice? Email Poynter Senior Media Writer Tom Jones at tjones@poynter.org.

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