-Welcome to the show. -Thank you. Great to be here.
Can I just tell you, one of my favorite experiences
was, I was doing shows in Washington, D.C.,
and I... I went to eat at a restaurant,
and you were eating at the same restaurant,
and you got up to wa...
you were just leaving the restaurant, I guess,
but it felt like everyone in D.C.,
like, turns to look at you, like,
"That's the guy who could write about us and end our careers."
(laughter)
-You... you've written... -I remember that night.
-My fly was down. -(laughter)
I don't remember, 'cause I was looking at your eyes, Bob.
Okay.
You have written about nine presidents.
It feels like, for a long time,
people always regarded you as Bob Woodward,
the journalist who is impartial, he writes the story as it is.
I mean, you wrote about Nixon as well.
You wrote about nine presidents.
This book feels different, though.
It still feels like you're impartial, but it feels...
it feels like it really, really condemns President Trump.
Because of the evidence.
-(laughter) -Time and time again...
(applause)
...if-if you look, uh,
for... for a summary,
it's a war on truth,
and he's making all these decisions
in foreign policy and the economy,
and... it's not based on facts.
And so I think we're really...
I think this is a pivot moment,
-Right. -and the country needs to come to grips
with what's going on.
And there are gonna be investigations going on
for years, probably.
But here you have a situation where the president...
people who work for him
have to take papers off his desk
in order to prevent him
from beginning a catastrophe.
Like, there was an order about a trade agreement
in South Korea, and you think, "Oh, that's...
just a trade agreement,"
but it's a part of an alliance with South Korea,
-Right. -uh, where we have 28,000
of our troops there,
we have top secret special-access
intelligence programs that allow us to detect
a North Korean missile launch in seven seconds,
and Trump wants to begin that process,
and Gary Cohn, his top economic aide says,
"I have to take that
in order to prevent a calamity."
Now, I have... I've done this for 47 years,
and I've never seen people who felt
there was such an emergency.
This is... this is an interesting idea.
A president who has people around him
who publicly defend him,
but then privately seem to lambaste his every single move.
Because this book is not written as an observation.
You spoke to people who work in the White House,
who work for the president, you have notes,
you have tape recordings.
I'm-I'm constantly amazed,
and-and I struggle to understand
the fact that these people work for him,
and they all seem to know that the emperor has no clothes,
but they tell us that he's wearing Versace.
Yeah. And what you find,
'cause I have the time to really develop relationships
of trust with people who are there,
is the more they know, the closer they are to Trump,
the more they are on the verge
of having a cardiac arrest.
-Because of what he does -Wow.
and what he does not know.
And he will get locked in to these ideas.
Oh, like NATO, that security agreement
-that has kept the peace for 70 years, -Right.
he said, "Oh, we're wasting our money.
We're suckers for doing this."
And finally-- I mean, I never thought this would happen--
the secretary of defense has to tell the president
"Oh, we're doing these things to prevent World War III."
Job one, for a president: prevent World War III.
-Right? -(cheers and applause)
Just to put it in context, can you imagine Dick Cheney,
when he was secretary of defense to Bush, Sr.,
having to tell him, "Oh, by the way,
this is all designed to prevent World War III"?
Inconceivable. When I...
It seems like the very basic understandings
of the presidency and what's happening in the country,
are things that Trump doesn't grasp.
But there's always something that people bring up,
and that is, they say, "This is just like Nixon now."
You know? Apart from his knowledge, they're saying, like,
"Oh, the shady dealing, this is just like Nixon."
You actually wrote about Nixon.
You are, in many ways, part of the reason
that Nixon got into the trouble that he got into.
Now, do you think this is similar to Richard Nixon?
We're gonna find out,
and it all depends on the quality of evidence.
And there's a lot of aroma,
there are lots of things going on.
As you're rightly pointing out, wait a minute,
-these are violations of the law. -Right.
When does it get so serious
that the Republicans will wake up?
That's the question.
And they now are the enablers
of Trump in all of this stuff.
And you get to them privately,
and you say, "What do you think?"
And they say "My head hurts so hard."
Tough.
We-we are, you know, this-this...
Look. I mean, just take, uh, in the book,
John Dowd, who was Trump's personal attorney
in the Mueller investigation,
worked with him for eight months closely. Big supporter.
And said, "Okay, you're gonna have to testify
to this Special Counsel Mueller."
And Trump says, "Okay. Uh, I can do that, no problem."
So they do a practice session
and Trump starts making up things, lying,
blows up, and...
-In the practice session. -In the practice session.
And this is his lawyer so you can't testify.
If you testify, you will perjure yourself
and you'll wind up in an orange jumpsuit.
Like the one you picture... (chuckles) Trump in.
-Right. -And, uh, and then,
he finally concludes
that Trump is an effing liar.
I know you're not supposed to say that word on the air.
-Oh, you can say it here. -Oh, you can? Okay.
-You can say it here. Um... -I mean-- okay.
(cheers and applause)
Here's something that you might be able to help me understand.
Because what-what I loved about this book
is that, honestly, it's a retelling of a story.
I don't feel your personal attachment to it.
It is a complete factual telling of a story
and interviews that you have with people.
But from your personal perspective,
from the interactions you've had
with some of the people who work with Trump,
why don't they just move on? They have Pence.
What is the endgame for them?
What do they hope will happen?
Uh, it's survival.
And imagine...
I mean, Meryl Streep, the actress-- great actress--
said just recently,
"Imagine what Donald Trump's 3:00 a.m. is like."
Just think of that. He gets up, and he tweets.
You look at this morning.
He was tweeting from 7:00 to 10:00 or 11:00,
and all about taking defensive positions
-on all of this. -Right.
You know, one of the things from doing nine presidents,
you-you come to the moment when somebody asks you,
"Well, what's the job of the president?"
And my definition of the job of the president
is to figure out the next stage of good
for a majority of people in the country.
-Win a war. Fix the economy. -(cheering and applause)
-We could put a board up here. -Right.
And we would come up with a list.
Not for the base or one party or interest groups.
You know, there really is a next stage of good
-for this country. -Right.
As best I can tell,
in Trump's world and presidency, that never comes up.
It is not addressed.
It's all about the moment of, you know...
-You saw that 20-minute Oval Office piece? -Right, right.
I mean, it's all about Trump and his emotions,
his impulses.
He got to the point of saying,
"Well, I'll close down the government
-and be proud of it. That will be a good thing." -Right.
Well, come on. I mean, he's-he's...
I mean, imagine the head of GM saying that.
"Oh, we'll close down all the plants,
-and I'll be proud of it." -"And I'll take the blame."
So, then, do you think... do you think...
-If you just look at this on the face of it, -Yeah.
one thing we've always said is...
he has earned the nickname the Teflon Don.
It seems like nothing sticks to Donald Trump.
Do you think there's a world where Cohen goes down,
Flynn goes down, Manafort goes down,
Papadopoulos goes down, everybody around him goes down,
and he miraculously comes out unscathed?
Uh, we don't know. But having Cohen,
the personal lawyer for ten years...
We know Cohen taped all kinds of things.
-Right. -In the Nixon case, it was thousands of hours of tapes.
I don't think those exist.
But if there's one witness you want,
it's the president's lawyer, because, you see, in...
when Trump was in New York real "estrate"--
uh, real estate-- they, uh, people would do deals with him.
-Right. -And they called it "the Donald risk,"
taking any arrangement with him.
And what they made sure they did
is they would structure the deal
so he couldn't get his hand...
-hands on the cash flow, on the money. -Wow.
Because he would just take it out,
and they would try to prevent that from happening.
So, the operation...
Uh, saddest moment in journalism
in American politics of the last decade
is we did not get his tax returns.
We should know his tax returns.
If anyone out there has them,
-please let me know. -(laughter)
-(cheering and applause) -Really.
(both laugh)
-Oh, man. Thank you so much for being on the show. -Okay.
-Thank you. -The book is phenomenal.
A true legend. Bob Woodward, everybody.
Fear is available now. Go out and get it.