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Woodward quotes Trump as saying, "We've got a little bit of an interesting setback with the virus going in China."

"It goes through the air," Trump said. "That's always tougher than the touch. You don't have to touch things. Right? But the air, you just breathe the air and that's how it's passed. And so that's a very tricky one. That's a very delicate one. It's also more deadly than even your strenuous flus."

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Throughout the book, Trump provides insights into his view of the presidency. He tells Woodward when you're running the country, "There's dynamite behind every door."

After his 18 interviews, Woodward issues a stark verdict: Trump is the "dynamite behind the door." Woodward concludes his book with a declaration that "Trump is the wrong man for the job."

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Woodward questioned Trump repeatedly about the national reckoning on racial injustice. On June 3, two days after federal agents forcibly removed peaceful protesters from Lafayette Square to make way for Trump to stage a photo opportunity outside St. John’s Church, Trump called Woodward to boast about his “law and order” stance.

“We’re going to get ready to send in the military slash National Guard to some of these poor bastards that don’t know what they’re doing, these poor radical lefts,” Trump said.

In another conversation, on June 19, Woodward asked the president about White privilege, noting that they were both White men of the same generation who had privileged upbringings. Woodward suggested that they had a responsibility to better “understand the anger and pain” felt by Black Americans.

“No,” Trump replied, his voice described by Woodward as mocking and incredulous. “You really drank the Kool-Aid, didn’t you? Just listen to you. Wow. No, I don’t feel that at all.”

As Woodward pressed Trump to understand the plight of Black Americans after generations of discrimination, inequality and other atrocities, the president kept answering by pointing to economic numbers such as the pre-pandemic unemployment rate for Blacks and claiming, as he often has publicly, that he has done more for Blacks than any president except perhaps Abraham Lincoln.

In another conversation about race, on July 8, Trump complained about his lack of support among Black voters. “I’ve done a tremendous amount for the Black community,” he told Woodward. “And, honestly, I’m not feeling any love.”

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In the midst of reflecting upon how close the United States had come in 2017 to war with North Korea, Trump revealed, “I have built a nuclear — a weapons system that nobody’s ever had in this country before. We have stuff that you haven’t even seen or heard about. We have stuff that Putin and Xi have never heard about before. There’s nobody — what we have is incredible.”

Woodward writes that anonymous sources later confirmed that the U.S. military had a secret new weapons system, but they would not provide details, and that the sources were surprised Trump had disclosed it.

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Mattis quietly went to Washington National Cathedral to pray about his concern for the nation’s fate under Trump’s command and, according to Woodward, told Coats, “There may come a time when we have to take collective action” since Trump is “dangerous. He’s unfit.”

In a separate conversation recounted by Woodward, Mattis told Coats, “The president has no moral compass,” to which the director of national intelligence replied, “True. To him, a lie is not a lie. It’s just what he thinks. He doesn’t know the difference between the truth and a lie.”

Woodward describes Coats’s experience as especially tortured. Coats, a former senator from Indiana, was recruited into the administration by Vice President Pence, and his wife is quoted as recalling a dinner at the White House when she interacted with Pence.

“I just looked at him, like, how are you stomaching this?” Marsha Coats said, according to Woodward. “I just looked at him like, this is horrible. I mean, we made eye contact. I think he understood. And he just whispered in my ear, ‘Stay the course.’ ”

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Pence was the president’s one constant booster publicly and privately in Woodward’s book. When Coats considered resigning because of Trump’s handling of Russia, Pence urged him to “look on the positive side of things that he’s done. More attention on that. You can’t go.”

The loathing was mutual. “Not to mention my ******* generals are a bunch of pussies. They care more about their alliances than they do about trade deals,” Trump told White House trade adviser Peter Navarro at one point, according to Woodward.

Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, is quoted by Woodward as saying, “The most dangerous people around the president are overconfident idiots,” which Woodward interprets as a reference to Mattis, Tillerson and former National Economic Council director Gary Cohn.

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Former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis slept in his clothes because of North Korea's missile launches amid the US's rocky relations with the regime in 2017, according to a new book on the Trump administration.

The account comes from CNN's review of Bob Woodward's upcoming book, "Rage," which is scheduled for release on September 15.

According to the book, US-North Korean relations were fragile and the potential for nuclear war was on the mind of the president's national security staff. Pyongyang fired roughly two dozen missiles in 2017, including its highest-ever intercontinental ballistic missile, shortly after Donald Trump became president.

As North Korean leader Kim Jong Un continued to conduct missile and nuclear tests, Trump warned the regime of "fire and fury" if it threatened the US. The situation concerned Trump's national security team, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who reportedly said, "We never knew whether it was real" or "a bluff."

Meanwhile, then-Defense Secretary Mattis, a retired four-star Marine Corps general, had slept in his clothes in case of North Korea's missile launch and visited the nearby Washington National Cathedral to pray, according to CNN's review of the book.

Mattis announced he was resigning from his position in December 2018. He cited disagreements with the president's decision to withdraw US troops from Syria, an unpopular view among senior military leadership and US allies at the time.

"Because you have the right to have a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours on these and other subjects, I believe it is right for me to step down from my position," Mattis wrote in his resignation letter.

For more than a year after his resignation, Mattis, like other retired military leaders, refrained from speaking out against the administration.

In June 2020, however, he penned an statement published in The Atlantic that criticized the administration's controversial response to the Black Lives Matter protests. At the time, people across the country were protesting the Minneapolis police's brutal arrest of George Floyd, prompting the Trump administration to threaten to deploy US combat troops to American cities.

"I have watched this week's unfolding events, angry and appalled," Mattis said in his statement at the time.

"Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people — does not even pretend to try. Instead, he tries to divide us," Mattis added. "We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership."

Woodward's book adds to Mattis's criticism of Trump, according to CNN. He's quoted as saying the president is "dangerous" and taught the US's adversaries "how to destroy America."

Mattis reportedly said he resigned after Trump's move to pullout from Syria, a decision that "basically directed to do something that I thought went beyond stupid to felony stupid."

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On March 19, as the coronavirus pandemic was exploding, Woodward asked Trump if he ever sat down alone with Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, to learn more about the virus.

"Yes, I guess, but honestly there's not a lot of time for that, Bob," Trump said to Woodward. "This is a busy White House. We've got a lot of things happening. And then this came up."

Woodward expresses surprise at Trump's response, considering "Trump had carved out hours" to do interviews with him, despite the unfolding crisis.

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1. Woodward

I'd like to take the other side of this Trump-Woodward story and offer two curveball views:

(1) I do not believe that Donald Trump "knew" how dangerous the coronavirus was. Allow me to explain.

Here are some of the things Trump told Woodward:

"You just breathe the air and that’s how it’s passed. . . . And so that’s a very tricky one. That’s a very delicate one. It’s also more deadly than even your strenuous flus.”

"This is deadly stuff."

“I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.”

How in the world can anyone be sure that these are the words of a man who understands the subject and not just the inflationary language of a guy who says that everything he touches is the biggest, or best, or most historic?

He won the 2016 election in a landslide!

Historic margins!

There were more people at his inauguration than any inauguration, ever!

He's more successful than any president since Washington!

He's done more for black people than anyone since Lincoln!

The new NAFTA is the greatest trade deal in history!

This is simply how the man talks. About everything.

What's more, he says everything, takes the both sides of everything:

Masks are bad. But patriots wear masks.

Racism is terrible. Some white supremacists are very fine people.

Fire and fury is coming to North Korea. Kim Jong Un is great leader who wants peace.

This pandemic is the Invisible Enemy and the worst threat ever. Also, it's not even as bad as the flu and it will go away like a miracle.

Does he believe any of this, either way? Almost certainly not. The man has the brain of a goldfish: He "believes" whatever is in front of him in the moment. No matter whether or not it contradicts something he believed five minutes ago or will believe ten minutes from now.

Also, his "didn't want to cause panic" line makes no sense. Donald Trump's entire career is based around trying to create panic.

Flight 93 election.
Mexican rapists.
Caravans.
American Carnage.
Muslims.
Antifa.
Black people moving to the suburbs.
Law & Order!

All this guy does is try to create panic. That's his move.

Put those two together—constant exaggerating self-aggrandizement and the perpetual attempt to stoke panic—and what you have is a guy was just saying stuff to Woodward.

In a way, it would be comforting to believe that our president was intelligent enough to grasp the seriousness of the coronavirus, even if his judgment in how to deal with the outbreak was malicious or poor.

But I cannot see any reason to believe that rosy view. All of the available evidence suggests the opposite:

Donald Trump lacks the cognitive ability to understand any concepts more complicated than self-promotion or self-preservation.

Which brings us to . . .

(2) The most alarming part of the Woodward tapes is the way Trump talks about Kim Jong Un and the moment when Trump literally takes sides with Kim Jong Un against a former American president.

Let's go to the tape:

“I don’t think Obama’s smart,” Trump told Woodward. “I think he’s highly overrated. And I don’t think he’s a great speaker.” Trump added that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un thought Obama was “an asshole.”

On the other hand, here's what Trump thinks about Kim Jong Un:

Trump remarked that he was awestruck meeting Kim for the first time in 2018 in Singapore, thinking to himself, “Holy ****,” and finding Kim to be “far beyond smart.”

Well, yes: Holy ****. The current president of the United States is flattering the dictator who leads one of our most dangerous enemies and taking sides with him in denigrating his predecessor in the Oval Office.

Unpatriotic? Treacherous? Mental? I don't know that we even have a word to describe behavior like this.

It gets worse, though. Woodward has copies of the beautiful letters that Kim and Trump have sent to one another and Trump goes on about how nifty he finds it that Kim refers to him as "Your Excellency." And Trump then brags about how Kim even described to him how he had his own uncle murdered, as if this was a mark of how special their bond is.

This, right here, is the most damning revelation from the Woodward tapes (so far):

Trump reflected on his relationships with authoritarian leaders generally, including Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. “It’s funny, the relationships I have, the tougher and meaner they are, the better I get along with them,” he told Woodward. “You know? Explain that to me someday, okay?”

It's not hard to explain. And it's not funny.

After the Woodward tapes, anyone still deluding themselves about the authoritarian danger Trump poses to America is, finally, all out of excuses.

quote:

The revelation President Donald Trump expressed serious concerns about the danger posed by the coronavirus outbreak, even as he downplayed the threat in public, drew outrage toward the White House and veteran journalist Bob Woodward for keeping the scoop quiet until the publication of his new book was imminent.

Woodward defended his decision not to share the revelation sooner in interviews with The Washington Post and The Associated Press after details from his upcoming book, "Rage," were made public Wednesday. In audio clips from the 18 interviews Woodward conducted with Trump, the president says the coronavirus is highly contagious and "deadly stuff" while admitting he "wanted to always play it down" because he didn't "want to create a panic."

When asked why he didn't share the discrepancies between Trump's private fears about the virus and his public statements minimizing the danger, Woodward told AP he needed time to determine if Trump's statements about COVID-19 were accurate.

"He tells me this, and I’m thinking, 'Wow, that’s interesting, but is it true?' Trump says things that don’t check out, right?" Woodward told AP, referring to Trump's habit of stretching or misrepresenting the truth. And he said he had to determine, "What did he know and when did he know it?" borrowing a phrase from his reporting for The Post on the Watergate break-in.

"The biggest problem I had, which is always a problem with Trump, is I didn’t know if it was true," Woodward told The Post.

Trump called "out of the blue" in early February to "unburden himself" about the potential severity of the coronavirus, Woodward told AP. And Trump's concerns seemed exaggerated at a time when public health officials like Dr. Anthony Fauci were telling Americans the risk of the virus reaching the U.S. was low.

Woodward said that it was not until May that he confirmed Trump's statements were based on reliable information and that at that point the virus was already widespread.

"If I had done the story at that time about what he knew in February, that’s not telling us anything we didn’t know," he told AP.

Woodward told The Post and AP that he believed it was more important for him to provide a broader picture of the Trump administration ahead of the election than to file daily news stories.

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Donald Trump lacks the cognitive ability to understand any concepts more complicated than self-promotion or self-preservation.

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After the Woodward tapes, anyone still deluding themselves about the authoritarian danger Trump poses to America is, finally, all out of excuses.

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Maybe it’s all Senator Lindsey Graham’s fault.

“It was Lindsey Graham who helped convince Donald Trump to talk to Bob Woodward,” Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson told his TV audience Wednesday night. “Lindsey Graham brokered that meeting. Lindsey Graham even sat in on the first interview between Bob Woodward and the president. How’d that turn out?”

It hasn’t turned out well, of course. Trump admitted in a taped interview with the veteran investigative reporter that he knew in February that the coronavirus was far more serious than he was acknowledging publicly. At least 190,000 Americans have since died from Covid-19, hurried to their graves by Trump’s faltering, apathetic response to the pandemic.

Trump spent nine hours across 18 interviews with Woodward for his new book, “Rage,” which has also spurred lots of finger-pointing in the White House. Senior Trump aides, according to Maggie Haberman of the New York Times, are also casting about for targets to blame for granting Woodward relatively lavish access to the president, as well as to his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and many others.

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Originally posted by Steve Miller:
Maybe the first useful thing Lindsay Graham has ever done.