Bob Woodward on His Trump Tapes

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

News, Wnyc, David, Arts, Yorker, Society & Culture, Storytelling, Books, New, Remnick, Politics

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 6 January 2023

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Bob Woodward is 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. “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.” And, in the wake of Damar Hamlin’s accident, the staff writer Louisa Thomas talks with David Remnick about an uncomfortable truth: football’s danger to players is part of its singular popularity.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:09.1	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. For over a half a century, Bob Woodward
0:15.9	has been gaining access to and reporting on people in the highest positions of power in the United States.
0:22.2	And when it comes to presidents, he has gone toe-to-toe with nearly everyone since Richard Nixon.
0:29.0	And if you look at Nixon, sorry, he failed.
0:32.3	Right?
0:33.0	Why?
0:34.0	Because of you.
0:35.2	No, no, no, no, that's not the...
0:38.9	I mean, there's...
0:40.3	You helped.
0:41.8	Woodward is every inch the reporter, not at all someone inclined to editorialize.
0:47.3	But in his many hours of conversation with Donald Trump, from before the election in 2016,
0:52.4	through the initial fallout of the COVID crisis, Woodward came
0:55.8	to see Trump as not just a disruptor, but a real danger to the nation. He's now released the audio
1:03.1	recordings of some of those conversations in a new book called The Trump Tapes. We hear Donald Trump's
1:09.3	state of mind in his own peculiar words, but we also
1:12.9	gain a greater appreciation for Woodward's process and his craft. Bob, you are now out with
1:22.4	something very unusual. You've been publishing books, obviously, since Watergate about the American presidency. Now you're
1:29.3	publishing with the Trump tapes an edited version of your raw materials, your tapes with Donald
1:36.1	Trump. And I have to ask you, after your first book about Trump in 2018, which was hardly a
1:42.6	flattering portrait, why do you think he went on talking to you
	...

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