Trump doesn't understand the presidency, doesn't understand responsibilities, and it's tragic for this country,

and the idea that he might be moving into the Oval Office again would make everyone tremble,

even his supporters, because his supporters know the extreme measures he would take.

Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped, and battlehardt.

There is not a liberal America and a conservative America.

There is the United States of America.

Hey folks and welcome back to the Lincoln Project podcast.

I'm your host, as always, Rick Wilson.

We are of only a few days away from the election,

and one of the most consequential books of the season is War by Bob Woodward.

It is a history of the first, well, the only term of the Biden administration and a lot of

the wreckage they had to clean up from the prior administration. I'm honored to have you on the show again, Bob,

and I wanted to ask you about the story of writing this book and about how you approached it, understanding we had just come out of a period of time under Trump, that one term that was so politically and physically sort of cataclysmic for America.

How did you approach reporting the Biden story of how he was going to take over and try to turn the course of what had happened during the Trump term?

I'm fortunate to have time, and I approached it empirically.

What happened?

Found firsthand sources, notes, documents that supported the storyline.

And of course, the conclusion is Biden made a very smart decision in December 2021 to not send ground troops to Ukraine.

And so now we are in a position where at least this second, the homeland is safe.

That decision to support Ukraine was not universally seen as a good idea with his national

security team at first, was it?

Well, there was a debate naturally, but it became so obvious that the Russian invasion was so brutal and a threat to any reasonable national order.

...