Bob Woodward, welcome to The Daily Social Distancing Show.
Thank you.
You are one of America's most respected journalists,
and I would venture to say that you are also one
of America's most feared journalists,
especially when it comes to American presidents.
Your work is part of the reason
Richard Nixon did not have the job
for as long as he wanted to, and now your work could be
the reason that Donald Trump doesn't have the job
as long as he wants to.
I would love to know, why do presidents
still feel the need to speak to you
when it seems like it's a catch-22?
Well, Nixon would never speak to Carl Bernstein or myself.
Um, but, uh, Trump decided to.
It's kind of a complicated chronology,
but I did a book-- I was on your show for Fear in 2018,
and Trump had not talked to me, and he felt that was a mistake.
And we developed this-- during the pandemic--
this odd telephone relationship
where he would call me at 10:00 at night.
I had to carry a little tape recorder around
in order to make sure I recorded it.
Uh, he... and for nine hours and 41 minutes, uh...
Right. You dropped, uh, the bombshell a few weeks ago.
You have Donald Trump on tape explicitly saying
that he was downplaying the threat of coronavirus,
because he didn't want people to panic.
Do you think Donald Trump was saying it in a malicious way,
or can you see his reasoning
for why he was saying the things he was saying?
Well, I can see, from his point of view,
and he said, "I downplayed it, I always downplayed it.
I didn't want people to panic."
Early on, in-in... January 28,
which is the key moment-- that's when I begin my book--
this was all laid out for him
in the kind of detail that, when I found about it,
I thought: Oh, my God, the whole case is there.
His national security advisor, Robert O'Brien,
saying to him, with passion:
"This virus is going to be
the biggest national security threat to your presidency."
And the deputy, Matt Pottinger,
had been a Wall Street Journal reporter in China
for seven years, he had Deep Throats in China
who said, "This is what's going on,"
and what's going on is, this is going to be like
the 20-- I'm sorry--
like the 1918 pandemic, Spanish flu,
uh, that killed 675,000 people in this country.
So Trump knew. This was a top secret meeting.
The doctors did not know,
because they were not in this meeting.
There were two, uh, major channels of information
for the president at this time.
They only came together to him,
and, uh, he failed to do his duty
to protect the people.
He failed to do his duty to tell the truth.
You...
caught a lot of flack from people who said:
Bob Woodward, you sat on this for seven months,
and you didn't tell us that Trump knew how bad this was.
You saw him in the news, at rallies,
saying that coronavirus is a hoax
and people shouldn't worry and it's gonna disappear,
but you knew that he knew how severe it was.
Why didn't you come out and say something?
-It's a fair question. -How do you... Yeah.
Um, when he told me about this on February 7,
I knew and thought for sure he was talking about China,
because everything was China in January, in February.
And if it had dawned on me
that he was talking about the United States,
of course I would have gone to The Washington Post
and said, "We've got to run this story."
But it was May when I learned
that what Trump was talking about
-was this critical, central... -Ah...
January 28, uh, meeting when it was laid out to him.
When I finally figured it out, frankly, uh,
the world knew that, uh, the virus was a pandemic.
The world and the people in this country knew it was airborne.
They knew that it was deadly.
They knew, if you had some sort of...
if you didn't have symptoms, you could still spread it.
-Right, right, right. -So this is what Trump knew,
and we knew we could put the...
the book out before the election--
that's the demarcation line, so people can either accept it
or reject it.
Uh, that's fine.
But I feel totally comfortable,
and if you read through the book and understand the time line,
-Mm-hmm. -uh, you-you can see,
I believe, exactly how I responded.
You know, you've been privy to conversations
that nobody else would.
You've seen how presidents think.
You've seen how their advisors interact with them.
You've seen how... how, you know,
how the sauce, the secret sauce is made.
Is there a difference in how President Trump,
as a "president," works?
Or have you seen dysfunction like this in other White Houses,
and they just do better job of insulating the story
-from coming out? -Important question.
Certainly Nixon, the first president I worked on,
was criminal.
And, uh, the Republican Party revolted then, in 1974,
and went to him and said, "You don't have support."
When Barry Goldwater said, "I've counted,
"and there are four votes you have
if this becomes a Senate trial,"
and the next night Nixon announced his resignation.
Uh, some of the other presidents clearly had made mistakes,
but their-- as best I can tell,
it's always a good-faith effort, sometimes misguided,
uh, but it's a good-faith effort.
January 28 should have been
the moment the Trump presidency change... changed.
He gave his State of the Union address, uh,
maybe a week after that critical January 28 meeting,
and that's the address to Congress.
40 million people watched it,
and Trump devoted 15 seconds to the virus,
and he said, "We're doing everything we could."
Now, if he had taken this time and said, "Look,
"my experts have rung the bell.
"There are some things you can do,
"like wash your hands, like keep social distance of six feet,
"don't get in a room with lots of people,
-and wear a mask." -Right.
Instead, he goes on merrily, uh, playing it down,
not understanding the country that he leads.
Uh, it is a tragedy, uh,
beyond Shakespeare, quite frankly.
Bob Woodward, thank you so much for joining us on the show.
Thank you. Enjoyed it.