Bob Woodward on His Calls with Trump
The Political Scene | The New Yorker
The New Yorker
4.3 • 3.9K Ratings
🗓️ 16 January 2023
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Bob Woodward has been writing about the White House for more than fifty years, going toe to toe with nearly every President after Richard Nixon. Woodward is every inch the reporter, not one to editorialize. But, during his interviews with Donald Trump at the time of the COVID-19 crisis, Woodward found himself shouting at the President—explaining how to make a decision, and trying to browbeat him into listening to public-health experts. Woodward has released audio recordings of some of their interviews in a new audiobook called “The Trump Tapes,” which documents details of Trump’s state of mind, and also of Woodward’s process and craft. Despite having written critically of Trump in 2018, Woodward found his access unprecedented. “I could call him anytime, [and] he would call me,” Woodward tells David Remnick. His wife, Elsa Walsh, “used to joke [that] there’s three of us in the marriage.”
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| 0:42.5 | Yeah, eBay. Things people love. |
| 0:49.3 | This is the political scene, and I'm David Remnick. |
| 0:55.9 | For over a half a century, Bob Woodward has been gaining access to and reporting on people |
| 1:01.9 | in the highest positions of power in the United States. |
| 1:05.9 | And when it comes to presidents, he has gone toe to toe with nearly everyone since Richard Nixon. |
| 1:12.6 | And if you look at Nixon, sorry, he failed. |
| 1:15.9 | Why? Because of you. |
| 1:18.8 | No, no, no, that's not the, I mean, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, |
| 1:24.1 | you left. |
| 1:25.4 | Woodward is every inch the reporter, not at all someone inclined to editorialize. |
| 1:30.9 | But in his many hours of conversation with Donald Trump, from before the election in 2016 |
| 1:35.7 | through the initial fallout of the COVID crisis, Woodward came to see Trump as not just |
| 1:40.9 | a disruptor, but a real danger to the nation. |
| 1:45.3 | He's now released the audio recordings of some of those conversations |
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