The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Encore Presentation - Bob Woodward: Is Trump a Crook?

Episode Date: February 21, 2024

Today an encore presentation of an episode that originally aired on January 2nd. Watergate and Richard Nixon brought him fame, and fifty years later Bob Woodward is still doing the journalism that is chasing another U.S. President.  A wide-ranging interview to kick off another year of The Bridge -- Woodward's take on everything from Donald Trump to the state of the media.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. It's Wednesday. It's our Encore edition. We go back a little more than a year to January of 2023 for our Encore edition, talking with the Washington Post's Bob Woodward about the Trump era. Hope you enjoy it. Well, today, a special show, as mentioned, Bob Woodward from the legendary team of Woodward and Bernstein, who broke the Watergate story in many ways, led to the resignation of Richard Nixon. Bob Woodward, who's now been busy on the Trump story, he's just got his fourth book coming out. He's with us. To talk about, well, to talk about Trump,

to talk about the state of journalism today, to draw conclusions between Trump and Nixon, to answer the question, do you see a day when Donald Trump will be in a jail cell? So, Bob Woodward, with his thoughts on all of that. Keep in mind, Woodward, he's almost 80 now, and one of the hallmarks of his career has always been how deliberate he is in his journalism,

how deliberate he is in his reporting, on his fact-checking, and the way he talks about what he's discovered. He's very careful. He thinks through every word he says. Now, some people will say, hey, that's slow talking. Well, it's the same people who say, I'm a slow talker. And I, hey, I am. I'm a relatively slow talker. Well, so was Bob Woodward. But think behind the slow talking. He is being very deliberate. He doesn't want to make mistakes,

and he doesn't make mistakes. So Bob Woodward here with us, and he's going to talk about everything, about the process of his journalism, how he goes about getting stories, how he went about convincing Donald Trump to talk to him. And that's been one of the big surprises for me. They've had 20 conversations. 20. And I'm not sure any one of those conversations has worked out well for Donald Trump, but he keeps going back.

Woodward's reporting on some of the decisions made during the COVID early days are remarkable. And you'll hear that. But his comments about journalism, the state of journalism, are really important too. I'm breaking this into two parts, kind of a part one and a part two. It's all for today. It's the full show today. There's nothing else on today's program.

So listen carefully, and if you get a chance, drop me a line, the Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com, the Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. Let me know what you think. So let's get started with segment one of my conversation with Bob Woodward. You know, Bob, you've often said that eventually the truth comes out. Where are we on the word eventually with Donald Trump? Is the truth out yet, or are we close to the truth?

Well, the truth is never out. We move, as Ben Bradley, the former editor of the Washington Post during Watergate, said, I'll speak his words. He said, nose down, ass up, moving slowly forward, and that the truth emerges. And sometimes it takes days, weeks, months, even years. And in the case of Trump, I've released these audios of my interviews with him, so you can hear him exactly as I heard him as I was questioning him on a range of issues. The last nine months he was president in 2020.

So does that bring us closer to the truth, do you think? You know, as Ben Bradley used to say, you know, the truth will emerge over time. Are we closer to that time? Yes, of course it does i mean as we know and as-up after follow-up. One of the breakdowns in our communications media now is that a president will go to the helicopter and ask two questions and then leave. In this case, Trump agreed to essentially be interrogated and go through these issues in great detail, and that's what the audio book shows. Let me ask you why he would have agreed. It's a, you know, it's not

your first book on Trump. You've written a number of them and let's, let's just say that they're not necessarily flattering of him, um, over time, but I'm wondering why would he sit down and agree to keep talking to you? Is it the sort of Bob Woodward thing? You know, that there's, you know, there's history in sitting down talking to you. I mean, I just, I, some people just don't get it. I don't get it. Why would he keep agreeing to talk to you? Well, what, what happened, I did the first book fear in which I concluded that his administration amounted to a nervous breakdown of the executive branch of government in the United States. As the New York Times and everyone said, it was a devastating portrait. He doesn't read books, as you know. One of his close supporters, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, told him I would not put words in his mouth. I, of course, did not and do not. Trump thinks that

reporters do make up things. He knows I didn't make up things. Even when the book version of this came out in rage, he said, gee, I said some great things in that book. So he thinks it works for him. Well, he, he, uh, look, I, my process here is to go to people, including many presidents and say, I want to hear what you've done, your reasoning, uh, in the, in the case of Trump, it was all recorded with his permission. And let's just take an example, because I think the strength had closed down the country because of the pandemic, the coronavirus pandemic, I interviewed him and I had talked to the experts like Dr. Fauci and others, Dr. Redfield, and they said they were meeting with Trump on the virus issue, but he was not paying attention. He was not listening. He did not have a plan. So I copied down the 15 things that all of my sources said Trump needed to address.

Foremost is to come up with an overall strategy, a Manhattan-like project strategy that Roosevelt had in the period of developing the atomic bomb. And this needed to be full mobilization. Everyone told me at these coronavirus meetings he was having, he had people who were virus deniers in the meetings. He would not listen, would not pay attention. So I came up and listed these and on April 5th spent 15 minutes saying, you need to coordinate with other countries, with intelligence agencies. You need to provide a definition of what is an essential worker. All of the 15 things are on the audio book,

and he didn't seem to want to listen to this. But then he said, did you write them down? And I said, well, of course I did. And he said, well, read them again. And I thought, ah, he has somebody in the room taking these down and he's going to do something. Well, it turned out he did absolutely nothing. And in the at the end of that interview with Trump's knowledge, my wife, Elsa Walsh, who is a journalist who worked for The Washington Post and The New Yorker was listening also with Trump's full knowledge. And after the conversation with Trump ended, she said to me, said, you're yelling at him.

You're telling him what to do. That's not your job. And I said, we are in a different world now that I have information that the top officials in the government tell me he needs to know and actions he needs to take. And he's not listening. So my agreement with Trump was I could talk to him, call him anytime. He would call me anytime. And so it was a different world. And I believe a reporter has an obligation when they have knowledge to even press the president of the United States on that. In the simple example, as a reporter, if you're on the street and somebody has been shot, before you start taking notes or interviewing people, you're going to make sure that that person is treated,

or that 911 has been called, or that there's an ambulance there. Well, this was very much a situation like that. The country needed an ambulance. The tragedy was that Trump failed miserably. And it was six weeks after this call that I learned that back in January, he had been warned by his national security advisors of the severity of this virus that was coming before it was in the United States. And he ignored that. Do you think, you know, just picking up on your wife's point, you know, do you think you crossed the line?

Well, no, not in a case like that. I have, you know, we're journalists, but believe it or not, we try to be human beings first. And as I said, the country needed an ambulance. And I am going to share this. And it's shared in the audio tapes. And my wife's conclusion that I was shouting at him, I was telling him what to do. And she's absolutely right. And we were, we still are to this day in a new world. The virus may turn out to be the biggest story of our lifetime. Not just what happened in 2020.

Now in the United States, a million people have died from the virus. You see what's happening in China where a million people are getting the virus each day. There are variants. There is long COVID. And you interviewed these people who know the most about it. And a lot of them say we are in the mystery And so when I discovered later in May that Trump had been warned in national security advisor, Robert O'Brien, the tapes January 28th and said at a top secret presidential daily briefing, said this virus is coming. It is going to be the biggest national security threat to your presidency. His deputy, Matt Pottinger, who'd been in China for seven years as a Wall Street Journal reporter, rang a bell I'd never heard rung so starkly, so based on hard evidence to a president. And Potensher said his contacts in Contacts in China said, we know this now, that the Chinese lie, that they cover up. And Patenshaw had contacts there.

This is in January who are telling him this is going to set like the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic that killed 650,000 people in the United States. President Trump had that warning. And as I pressed him on this, he said, well, I always wanted to play it down. I did not want to create a panic. Well, sometimes a president, a leader needs to create a panic by telling people the truth. You know, after all these interviews and after all the writing you've done on Donald Trump, what's your conclusion about him at this point? I mean, what do you think of him? Well, you know, I do reach my conclusions because I probably certainly spent more time interviewing him than anyone.

I wrote three books on him, and I did these audio tapes really essentially is a fourth book. And that book will come out in printed form in a couple of weeks. And so people can read it, not just listen to it. And, um, though I think the listening is essential. Uh, I, in one of the early interviews with Trump in the Oval Office, this is 2019. So, again, he'd been president almost three years and we're talking about why he won in 2016. And my conclusion was that he realized in 2016, when he won, that the old order in the Republican Party was dying and the old order in the Democratic Party was dying. And

he just, I wish I had a video of this, behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, just jumped with recognition and affirmation, said, yes, and I'm going to do it again in 2020. Well, he did not, as we know. He lost. But I think he grasped something in 2016 that discovered people felt that they were out of it, that the elites were controlling things. kind of an elite in a way. He was able to make an appeal. Look, I understand these people. I'm working for you. And my conclusion is not only that he doesn't believe in democracy, but he does not understand the presidency. And this is the worst thing that can happen. You as an interviewer, you understand your job. If you don't understand it, you can't do it. He does not understand the presidency. And at one point I said, what's the job of the president? He said to protect the people. He failed miserably at that in July of 2020. He's running for reelection. Really, the next last interview with him. And I say, well, it's pretty bad, isn't it? And he said, what's pretty bad? And I said, well, the virus killed 140,000 people in your country, 40 times the number of people who died in the 9-11 terrorist attacks. And what's your plan? He said, well, I'll have a plan. I said, but what about now? He said,

I'll have a plan in 104 days. And I, what's he talking about? And then I calculated, realized 104 days from that interview with him, people came to listen to it. July 20th. From that day, 104 days ahead was, guess what? Election day. This was all about the election. That's what he was worried about, not the people who had died or his failure to come up with a plan. And it's stunning. All of the crimes of Richard Nixon, pale, that are insufficient and reprehensible on the Nixon part. And of course, then 50 years ago, he resigned

because the Republican Party rose up against him once the truth came out. The truth about Trump has come out and the Republican Party, by and large, has remained mute and is not calling him to account. And quite frankly, I think as much as, I mean, there's so much journalism, there's so many books, but collectively you put them together, particularly these audio tapes, because they are in his own voice. And you realize the calamity and tragedy. And in my view, it's what he did on the virus is a crime. He had a responsibility, constitutional responsibility, to protect the people and inform them.

Let me pick up on the Nixon comparison for a moment because there are a few, as we all know, there are a few people who have covered both Nixon and Trump as closely as you have. Are there comparisons or are these two totally different people? Well, there are alarming similarities. First of all, what Nixon did in Watergate, you ask, you have to think about, and I, of course, have spent over 50 years on this and written about it and revisited it. What was Watergate?

It was a successful effort to destroy the process, the legitimate process in this country to nominate and elect a president. And this was a series of dirty tricks, spying, espionage. And what Nixon did is found a weakness in the system we have in this country. It's all up to the political parties to come forward with a nominee. And then we have an election that this is an election that the parties are putting their nominees in a face-off. So what Trump did, he understood the weakness in the system in a different way.

And that weakness is which he has tried to destroy. And the system is on January 6th in our constitution and in the electoral count law, which goes back to 1887. On January 6th, after a presidential election, there is a process designated that the president of the Senate, who happens to be the vice president, and in this case, it was Vice President Pence oversees a session of the House of Representatives and the Senate and the votes, the electoral votes are counted from the states. And all of Trump's efforts to this day are to destroy that process. As Nixon effectively destroyed the process of dominating and electing a president,

Trump has tried to destroy this process, not just with words, but with inciting the insurrection, now insurrection on the Capitol, 800 people had been charged with crimes in that insurrection, which he sat for hours and watched on television, despite the urging of aides to do something to try to call his people off. So George Washington, President George Washington, in 1796, in his very famous farewell address, said, Unprincipled people will seek and hold the presidency. And I marvel looking back at that, how right Washington was,

and the unprincipled criminals are Richard Nixon and Donald Trump. Is Trump a crook? Well, Trump's a criminal. You can't do what he did and ignore the obligation to tell the people. Compare it with Franklin Delano Roosevelt after the Pearl Harbor attack on the United States. Roosevelt went on one of his most famous fireside chats with the public and said, we've been hit. Our very survival is in doubt.

I am calling on every man, woman, and child to rally to the cause. I believe you will rally to the cause as you always have, and we will win. But this is going to be hard. This is going to be the hardest thing we do. What does Donald Trump do? Donald Trump, if he does something like that after he was warned by his national security advisors, come out and said, my national security experts with solid, confirmed data have told me we are going to have a medical Pearl Harbor coming to this country. And I am telling you, our survival hinges on it. We're going to organize and plan. And I count on you to rally to the cause. If he had done that, he would have been reelected by a landslide in 2020.

How is this, the Trump story, in your view, how is this going to end? I mean, with Nixon, many people thought he should have gone to jail. He didn't. He was pardoned by Ford, as we all know, and therefore was never charged. The process is underway that could very well lead to not only just a charge, but a number of charges against Trump. But how do you see it? Can you see a former U.S. president in a jail cell? Well, you know, our threshold with dealing with the inconceivable in the United States is always expanded. So anything can happen. This is one of the hardest calls that the attorney general in this country that makes this decision is going to have to make.

I have said this and reported on this for months, that there's a battle royale going on in the Justice Department about what to do with Trump because of arguments, and Merrick Garland, the attorney general, has made them public. No one is above the law. Clearly, the law was violated by Trump in multiple ways. But as you, in the tone of your voice, can you see a former president of the United States in jail? And what will that mean? What will that look like internationally? I mean, has a Canadian former prime minister ever gone to jail?

That would be a historic moment. And there are all kinds of, you know, in politics, you think something happens and that's the first bounce, and then there's a second bounce, and a third bounce, and sometimes a tenth bounce. And you don't know even what the second bounce is going to be. And there's some people who say that if Trump is indicted, that will ensure that he is nominated again for president in the Republican Party, because there are tens of millions of people who still support him.

I don't know. I know I've traveled the country a good deal, and I know there are Republicans who don't believe and support him that the election was stolen from him. It's interesting, but they do still support him. Well, there you go. Part one of our interview with Bob Woodward, mainly about Donald Trump through that whole segment. We're going to get into some more stuff here in segment two in a moment, including

kind of the role of the media in trying to deal with these stories in these days, because there are a lot of questions about that. Many of them we've asked on this program back with, uh, Bob Woodward in just one moment. And welcome back. You're listening to this special editions of The Bridge, special interview, extended interview with Bob Woodward from The Washington Post, the legendary investigative reporter and legendary, man, that is the word to use with this guy.

All right, let's get back to the interview with Bob Woodward. Before I lose you here, because you've been very generous with your time, I want to touch on something that you, in fact, brought up near the beginning of this conversation, and that was the media and the fact that we're living during a time where trust in the media is at a level much lower than we've been used to over the years that you've witnessed. I mean, you and Bernstein kind of redefined the media in some ways, especially in investigative journalism as a result of Watergate in the early 70s. But these days, when you ask people about the media, they don't believe it or they are confused by it or they find that it's too partisan or what have you. You've seen the list of all the things that the media is accused of these days.

Do you think the media in general, and I know it's dangerous to treat the media as a monolith because there's different news organizations with different values, et cetera, et cetera. But in general, do you think the media, the people are justified in worrying about the media and trusting the media in today's world. First of all, I mean, we've got a product, right? The media collectively, information.

And if the people who were providing it to our doubters or don't believe it, then we've got a problem. And we've got to walk that perilous, painful road of self-examination. And I remember going of the Watergate coverage that Carl and I did. But after Nixon resigned, she wrote us a letter on yellow legal pad and written, Dear Carl and Bob, Nixon's gone. You did some of the stories. Quote, now don't start thinking too highly of yourselves. And let me give you some advice. And the advice is beware the demon pomposity. Pomposity is a demon. It too often stalks the halls of our news organizations, of politics, of Hollywood, of Wall Street, every institution, even academia has

its occasional, I'm being sarcastic here, pomposity figures of pomposity people don't like pomposity because it reflects smugness and self-satisfaction and

you kind of just have to try to do your job and be as listening as possible. But the demon pomposity is a problem. The Trump tapes come out in the book. This is not video.

But it will be out in a couple of weeks in the printed form. The Trump tapes, the historical record, these 20 interviews I have with Trump, I mean, the book is 454 pages. It's every word, every question. And Jay Tapper, who was a CNN anchor and correspondent, said of the Trump tapes, an uncharacteristic warning from one of the most respected nonpartisan journalists in the world. I am nonpartisan. I've written some of the toughest stuff on Democrats, Clinton, Obama. And I think that's, I think that's really important,

but I also think we've got to look inward. And when the people you are selling your product to don't like it or trust it, then you can't go to them and say, well, wait a minute. We're trying, this is what we do. We've got to say, gee, how are we doing this? What is pomposity part of the problem? Is partisanship part of the problem? Is a lack of effort?

Is this crazy world of breaking news the twitter internet just give it to me in a sentence in fact give it to me in a word part of the discussion around the media is about you know the the politics of the lie the power the lie, and how the media deals with covering it and whether they're aggressive enough in dealing with it. I mean, just in the last few days, we've heard about this congressman who was elected with a totally bogus background, his resume. Everything in it seems to have been a lie.

And yet nobody checked. I mean, it was bad to have been a lie and yet nobody checked i mean it was bad enough that his party didn't check but the media covering him clearly didn't check or at least the the most of the media i think there was one local paper who raised some some questions but it's this it's the same kind of thing it's's about how aggressive, and I totally get your point on pomposity, but in terms of the basics of journalism and whether they have earned the trust by doing the basics, do you see an issue there? Well, certainly, but it's connected to time against the problem.

Let me give you an example. In the third Trump book, Peril, that I did with my colleague, Robert Costa, which lays out in great detail Trump's claim that the election was stolen. Costa and I obtained the memos. It's a thick stack from Rudy Giuliani to Senator Lindsey Graham, saying that there was fraud everywhere in the election. For instance, in these memos, Rudy Giuliani, Trump's lawyer, says in Wisconsin, 226,000 people who were in federal, state, or local jail voted. Never happened. It never happened. you don't remember the story because it never happened. And so we checked and there was no one in prison that we could find any story, any jail, any prison, any government official who said this. But this is just asserted as true. Now, we don't call it a lie.

What we do is say there's no evidence. A lie has to do with state of mind. In this case, Rudy Giuliani or Trump's state of mind. We don't know what we can report what he said, what he did. Does he believe some of this stuff that is unsupported or is he just fabricating? I mean, it's the point is there's no evidence to support that. Zero evidence. And Costa and I, in doing this reporting, had the time to track down a book for the first time. Eastman says there's

seven states that have alternative electors to count. So we looked at the memo. It's now known as the coup memo because it laid out what Trump should do to get Pence to not certify Biden as the winner. But you know how many states had alternative electors? Zero. We were able to check. Fine. And so we say, so there's no support for this in the January 6th committee investigation. They made criminal referrals of two people by name, Donald Trump and John Eastman, because of this memo, because it's documented. And we presented that document and the January 6th committee looked at peril and it was the basis for some of their subpoenas and some of their investigation. And it's for us, we don't recommend that Trump be prosecuted like that committee did. We don't make any recommendation, but we do reach the judgment that the country is still in peril, that it is a treacherous time for the United States. And Trump is running again.

Biden apparently is running again. Biden apparently is running again. Are we going to have a reduplication of the 2020 election? You know, I just I wonder about that, wonder where this is going. And of course, worry about it. So there's, and you haven't asked this question, but I'm saying there is a whole lot of work for everyone in my business in the coming two years. That's a good place to leave it, but I am going to just ask one quick last question. Aside from the work of journalists and aside from the work of committee investigations, the two big stories in your life, your career, the Nixon story and the Trump story, both of those managed to be advanced, aside from the journalism and the committee work, by individuals

who testified. You've got, you know, you have the Dean testimony against Nixon cancer growing on the presidency. You have the Alexander Butterfield talking about the tape recordings in the White House. Well, and actually exposing them. Exactly. And then they were subpoenaed, and the Supreme Court forced Nixon to turn them over. Exactly.

It may have been the final blow, right? Yes. What really ended it for Nixon but in this case you have this this young woman Cassidy Hutchinson who seems to be the only one where the truth broke through in that inner circle the wider inner circle actually because you know it's not like she was a senior advisor she was basically in a secretarial job but she heard everything and she decided she was going to tell the truth. And you read the transcript of her interview that the January 6th committee did. It's remarkable. Well, do you know what she said?

She read that the turning point was reading the book I did on Alexander Butterfield, who disclosed the Nixon tapes. And Cassidy Hutchinson, under oath, said she had not told the truth the first time that she was interviewed by the January 6th committee. And then she Googled Watergate. And the Googling of Watergate led her to Butterfield in that book. And she bought two copies, read them, read one, I guess gave one to her parents or friend, read one three times, she said. And this is what she realized that Butterfield was confronting the moral questions of, even though you work for a president, is the truth more important? And she put it very eloquently. And she said, you have to reach a point where you can pass the look in the mirror test.

In other words, can you look in the mirror and see yourself and live with yourself? That's what sent her to go testify again and tell the truth and expose what she had said. laid the foundation for somebody having to confront, in the end, not just what they know, but who they are. Well, that will be a good book, and I'm sure you've been thinking about it. It would make a great movie, too. The book's The Last of the the president's men the book i did an alexander butterfield you know whatever it was eight years ago and uh i knew butterfield went to his home in california and went to the washroom and saw all these boxes in the shower. And I

came out and I said, what's that? And he said, oh, those are all the papers I took from the Nixon White House and boxes and boxes of top secret documents. I mean, it's just, it's just like the Mar-a-Lago basement, almost all of these documents. And he gave them to me and I did them in a book and, uh, Cassidy Hutchinson read it. Well, I think you better call Cassidy Hutchinson up and do another book. Her story is just an amazing story. But really, all of them, whether it's Hutchinson or Butterfield or to a degree, Dean, it shows you the power of one voice can have, even at a time when all this great journalism is going on around it,

which was definitely the case with Nixon and has been the case to a degree here with Trump as well. But without those, the power of those single voices, you wonder how far the story can go. I love that phrase, the power of one voice. And it's revealed time and time again, not just in journalism and politics, but someone will come forward from Wall Street and say, oh, by the way,

there's the Bernie Madoff scandal. Or Hollywood. There's, you know, it's time and time again. it's the power of one voice. like that can come forward, be accepted by journalists, by investigators. And, you know, the targets like Nixon and Trump will be very critical of these people, But they don't get bumped off or jailed or kidnapped in this country. out over the country and the democratic system, First Amendment system that we have. You know, Bob Woodward, it's been a treat reading you and learning from you over the years and having the opportunity to talk to you a number of times over the past, whatever, 20, 30 years.

I really, really appreciate it. And again, today, thanks years. I've really, really appreciated it again today. Thanks so much for doing this. Well, I appreciate you, and I've written down the power of one voice. Okay, well, you give me a credit when you can call. I promise. Name the next book. All right.

Thanks again, Bob. Take care. Thank you. Bob Woodward talking to us from his home in Washington, near Washington, and a great opportunity to listen to what he had to say about the stories he has covered and the story he is still covering today. That wraps it up for this special episode of The Bridge. Bob Woodward with us here.

We'll be listening to that one again a few times, I'm sure. And that was today's encore edition of The Bridge. Bob Woodward from January of 2023. Reminder, tomorrow, your turn. Your thoughts on, here's the question, your thoughts on what's on your mind. What one thing is on your mind this week? Send it in to the Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com,

the Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. Keep it short. Include your name and your location you're writing from. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks for listening.