An Evening With Bob Woodward

[Music] no [Music] so [Music] greetings it's a pleasure to welcome pulitzer prize-winning journalist bob woodward back to the university of texas at least virtually and i want to extend a word of welcome to all who are joining us online my name is steve ennis and i'm director of the harry ransom center which holds among its collections bob woodward's and carl bernstein's watergate papers since the arrival of these papers and the opening of that archive in 2005 numerous students and researchers have benefited from access to this collection of watergate documents and over the intervening years bob has become a good friend to the university of texas he and his washington post colleague carl bernstein created the woodward and bernstein endowment to support the further study and understanding of that national crisis in american political life for nearly five decades bob woodward has been one of our closest observers of the american presidency he is the author of 20 books beginning with all the president's men in the final days both co-authored with carl bernstein and subsequent books extending over the next eight presidencies including the agenda inside the clinton white house bush at war and obama's wars woodward and bernstein returned to campus with robert redford for the 35th anniversary of the watergate break-in and bob was last with us for a discussion of his 2015 book the last of the president's men at the lbj presidential library it is a pleasure to have him with us again even remotely for a conversation about his latest book rage seldom has a book been as urgent as this one with each passing year it becomes clearer that watergate was not a distant historical event but one that raised still relevant questions about the extent of presidential power and the resiliency of our constitutional framework as this history reminds us our founding constitution doesn't work on its own but instead requires our constant care and attention it requires of course an informed citizenry full participation in our political process and a system of representative government that is accountable to the people few have been as attentive to the role of the press and upholding these obligations as bob woodward rage is a deeply researched book that draws upon 17 interviews with president trump and hundreds of hours of anonymous interviews with others conducted under deep background in the course of writing this book bob woodward obtained copies of the letters exchanged between president trump and kim jong-un and drew upon dari's emails meeting notes and other primary source records the resulting account takes us inside the trump white house during one of the most tumultuous periods in recent american presidential history engaging bob woodward in conversation is my friend and colleague mark updegrove president and ceo of the lbj foundation mark is himself an accomplished journalist and historian and author most recently of the last republicans inside the extraordinary relationship between george h.w bush and george w bush published in 2017 this online conversation is co-sponsored by the harry ransom center the lbj presidential library and ut's school of journalism and media it's my pleasure to welcome you to an evening with bob woodward so bob woodward welcome and congratulations on the smash success of rage thank you well bobby uh you came to national prominence by taking down a president with the journalism that you did with your partner carl bernstein at the washington post in the early 1970s and since then you've scrutinized eight presidents including our incumbent uh donald trump with your book fear which did not exactly paint a flattering picture of donald trump so why would trump agree to 18 exclusive interviews for your current book well it it started out a num the book 2018 book of fear he didn't like and he denounced and i i understand some people close to him said well it's all true and so he's he had regretted not talking to me for fear and so this time he agreed to do it and it started december 5th last year i went into the oval office plunked down my olympus tape recorder and said this is all on the record will be recorded for the book that will come out before the election i did not expect to have the opportunity as uh he provided to interview him 18 or 19 times in the matter uh in what uh 10 months 9 months and to spend 9 hours and 41 minutes talking to him but bob why would he do it why would he talk to you of all people you again who have scrutinized so many and you've made it very clear what you think of trump and his administration and yet did he think he could beguile you he could sway you and bring you over to his side what was what was behind that decision well you know i'm not a psychiatrist i don't know why he agreed to do it i promised that he would have his say and even last week though he had said earlier some bad things about rage he said he said some great things in the book and when asked by a fox news anchor is the book accurate trump said it's okay it's fine i've read your other books bob and it's it seems to me you've never spoken as frankly to a president as you did to donald trump was that your feeling as well well and because it was in the middle of uh events and uh i did maybe 10 to 12 hours of interviews with george w bush uh about the wars and so forth so um but it wasn't the interviews with bush were at the white house in the oval office or in his private study in the residence and maybe there were half a dozen of them and in this case there were many more and there was a i have to say it and you see it in the book trump is very appealing he wants to push his point of view he was uh he would say oh i write let me quote him said you write about me and uh he expected a lousy book but he kept going on and answering questions so it provides a it is a truly unique history i i believe a window into his mind and into his presidency what was the greatest revelation for you bobby you knew this president pretty well having having completed fear and conducted many interviews albeit not with trump around that book but what was the greatest revelation that came from from this one well i uh first of all uh it took me three months to get to this uh that on january 28th of last year when his national security adviser robert o'brien said the virus is coming to the united states it will be not maybe but will be the biggest national security threat to your presidency the deputy matt pottinger who had been in china in the 2003 sars epidemic and knew how the chinese government lied and responded but patented your head i mean you know how important it is to have a source inside or multiple sources who will say this is reality patent your head those sources told the president on january 28th mr president my sources tell me this is going to be like the 1918 spanish flu pandemic that killed i mean think of this 50 million people then killed 675 000 people in the united states trump absorbed all of this in the reasoning and uh that the the failure to really lead and protect the country i once asked trump what's the job of the president he said it's to protect the people he failed to do that the january 28 of last year should have been a day that the trump presidency changed when he had an opportunity to lead in a coming crisis he had the evidence he unfortunately as i quote dr faushi in the book saying that trump is obsessed with reelection i think the focus is on reelection i think it's tragic for trump i'm really quite frankly embarrassed for him that he could not step up to that moment and tell the country the truth in some form i mean just i mean you know all about the presidency and how it works you are one of the country's experts on our presidents and i in a few days after this meeting in the oval office top secret told to the president the president asked questions absorbed it a few days later was the state of the union address as you know the state of the union address it's in the constitution actually requires the president to report what's going on what's important what are where are we heading he gave his state of the union address february 4th so this is a week afterwards uh 40 million this is before the congress 40 million people are watching on television he devoted 15 seconds to the virus and said we're doing everything we can which of course was not true and then he devoted two minutes and 45 seconds to rush limbaugh at this moment the president could have said my national security team has come to me with convincing evidence we have a public health crisis coming we're going to do everything we can and he could have in the simplest way said there is remedial action that people immediately can take wash your hands keep six feet away from people wear a mask don't get an enclosed room with other people for an extended period of time experts and people who model all of this said if trump had done some of that or all of it we would have had you know maybe even one person says it would have saved 150 000 lives 160 000 lives i don't know i don't know the medicine i don't understand it well enough but what i do understand is the presidency you know this there is a sacred trust you have in the presidency that uh a president has and lots of presidents have said when you're in that office you have a almost a almost mystical communication with every citizen you know you have to protect them you have to keep them informed you have to tell them the truth as president as a human being you have a moral responsibility i believe to share information with other citizens and if he failed and it was not until may i learned about this key meeting the book starts with that meeting because that's the fulcrum around which everything turns and uh it's uh i'm honestly i'm embarrassed for him that the fail i'm embarrassed for the republican party i'm embarrassed that he did not find a way to step up to the task because the task is actually quite simple and when i asked him later in march i said why didn't you why did you respond this way he said well i wanted to play it down i always wanted to play it down i did not want to create a panic you know from all your work on presidents presidents uh if they tell the truth to the country that there's george w bush after 9 11 rallied the country rallied the congress rallied the intelligence agencies rallied the military and uh franklin roosevelt after pearl harbor go listen to some of those fireside chats in which two days after pearl harbor he actually stepped up i can i read something because i want to want it to be comprehensive so this is two days after the japanese surprise attack on pearl harbor and in a fireside chat roosevelt says it's all bad news we have been hit the quote the most serious undertaking in american history is before us it's going to be grueling work day night every hour every minute and he said government government has confidence in you the citizens of this country your ability to hear the worst without losing art that's what the country did that it rallied around and won world war ii under his leadership and uh to not understand the obligation as a president as a human being as somebody who had moral responsibility and sees that moment is uh i think people in your business writing the history 10 years 20 years from now are going to describe that as one of the most horrific moments in american history and a failure by a sitting president to understand his broad responsibility it's breathtaking bob but you look at richard dixon who also misled and lied to the american people and he leaves office with an approval rating of 26 this president has clearly lied and misled folks and he doesn't deny it it's incontrovertible you have recorded these conversations with donald trump and yet he still has an approval rating of 40 some percent how do you explain that well uh look at uh i talked to trump about this trump came in 2016 and he seized history's clock uh as barbara tuchman in her great book the guns of august talks about what happened in world war before world war one and that uh the old order went out in a dying blaze i believe in 2016 the old order republicans democrats independents did people in the media and i include myself high on that list or at the top of the list did not understand what was happening in the country that you had building uh feeling that uh people people who were workers all kind of people who were businessmen and that they'd been cheated by the elite and been cheated by both parties and trump came in and i asked him i said you know you seized history's clock and he said yes i did and he said i'm going to do it again in the coming election so we're going to see i think the coming election frankly is a toss-up i trump told me pounded this into me said i have lots of secret support lots of secret support there is evidence of that how much there is uh we don't know but uh we look at november 3rd what is it six weeks away six weeks away he has said we don't know how we're going to count the votes don't count these mail-in ballots millions of bills he has forecast the president of the united states has forecast a quadruple train wreck in our election that's coming up how are we going to know what is the response going to be i asked him that people are saying that you uh are not gonna leave office uh and he said i don't wanna comment on that it's one of the few things he would not comment on but how do you sort this out a a president i think it's the obligation of the president to think more about the country than himself a president who thought about the country and had some sense of how important the electoral process is for our democracy would work out some way with the democrats and say you know we have to make sure it's the fairest election the most open one that we can count the ballots in a reasonable time but trump it's all about him it's all about being reelected and not only uh i mean for the virus he has smashed the country he's i i guess he's going to smash the country again with this election i uh i tremble for what might happen i want to come back to the election bob but but we've talked about history several times you yourself are an historic figure you will go down in history you came to prominence as a journalist but your books have made you an historian when you have a revelation like you got from trump earlier this year around covet 19 and him deliberately misleading the people how do you balance your responsibilities between being a journalist and being an historian it's a absolutely fair question and when he told me that in february 7th i can get out of giant stack of articles from the washington post in the new york times at that time in january and february all the discussion was about china the viruses was in china they closed down 768 million people in china twice the population of the united states and when they close people down in china they lock you in your apartment and uh it was extraordinary that was covered i thought uh on february 7th when he told me this he was talking about china all the evidence was about china and you know as a historian you live your life in chronological order you don't report or gather evidence in chronological order it was in may that i discovered about the january 28th meeting and asked him about it and he confirmed yes if he didn't remember it but he knows it was said that he got the warning that i'd described so in may even in march the virus everyone knows it's airborne everyone knows it's deadly what am i gonna tell them uh so i focused on finishing the book trying to put a package of information about him in his white house in his administration the demarcation line for me was the election can i get it out two months before or so before the election so people can have this window into a kind of truth particularly with all the recorded conversations what he did what he said what he cared about and uh you you know that as a historian have you ever worked on something for months and then you discover something that ah now i understand what happened in january i want to go back to the election bob um and you mentioned earlier it seems that uh trump's main intent is to get re-elected that's very clear in the book he wants to get re-elect that's his principal agenda as president right now what's not clear is what he wants to do with a second term there's no defining agenda what does donald trump want to do with the presidency if he is elected to a second term it's a great question and i don't know because see that's not the way trump thinks you're talking about planning i'm gen i'm sorry to go back to january 28th but it's a key moment in american history and in you know you or your successors uh as historians are going to be writing about that and putting uh the pieces together so um that that's key but as the book shows trump doesn't plan he doesn't organize he sends out messages and decisions by impulse by tweet i chart in massive detail the experiences of james mattis the secretary of defense rex tillerson the secretary of state dan coats the number one intelligence officer in the country dealing with trump and dealing with these decisions by tweet mattis is so worried rightly about a possible nuclear war with north korea he goes to the national cathedral here in washington have you ever been to the national cathedral not for a big service but just to go in i mean it smacks you in the face this is a place to think about moral responsibility this is the moment to reflect on your life how you are doing and he went in there to pray and reflect and realize i might quote him saying my god what's going to happen if i have to incinerate millions of people in order to protect the united states this was the moment and trump talked to me at length about this he said we almost had a war i quote secretary of state pompeo saying yes kim kim jong-un the north korean leader told him pompeo yes we were ready to go pompeo is quoted saying i don't know that it was true it might have been a bluff but we had to prepare for it so the secretary of defense who has that responsibility has to prepare for it it's one of the most chilling chapters in the book about somebody who has that responsibility who knows trump isn't into the details trump has delegated the authority to mattis to shoot down a north korean missile that might become come to the united states and mattis realizes if he does that kim jong-un could launch dozens of nuclear weapons in south korea our allies japan or the united states and so he might have to recommend to the president because on his own mattis cannot use nuclear weapons have to be the person recommending to president trump we are going to have to use nuclear weapons to make sure our country is kept safe which is his number one duty is secretary of defense so it's we go we dig into these things and the the life these people led working for trump so many members of our audience have asked the same question and particularly in light of what trump has said recently but in your view bond if trump does not get re-elected will there be a peaceful transfer of power that is the hallmark of american democracy i don't know and the fact that i can't answer that is because trump has made it very clear publicly that he's not going to step aside if there's some questions about it he has promised i mean think of this president of the united states promising chaos about the november 3rd election it is unfathomable and it is further indication that he has abdicated his responsibility to care for the country to care for the electoral traditions for the the promise that your vote's going to be counted that it's going to be mad that it's going to matter that we're going to have a level playing field i shudder i absolutely shudder when i think about the next six or seven weeks before the election what's going to happen what's going to happen on election day what's going to happen uh days after when some states have laws that say well you can have up to 30 days after the election to count the balance and he has trump has the responsibility to take care that our system works and instead of taking care he has promised a a as i say a quadruple train wreck imagine that how can somebody do that where are the republican senators who know i happen to know some of them they know as i said at the end of my book that trump is the wrong man for the job they know this they won't step up publicly and say this they won't go to him and say you can't behave this way you what you are doing it's not only to yourself it is to the republican party it is to the country and because of our place in the world it i mean look at what is europe going to think what what is putin going to think even you know if he's directly operating to help trump there's evidence of that this is this is um a your next book is going to be the title is just going to be 2020. trump in chaos trump maker of chaos trump a the president who abdicated his constitutional and moral responsibility i'm sorry that's the conclusion from the you read the book do you agree or not well no it's very disturbing i i do agree and there are so many revelations in this that are breathtaking one of them is his penchant for authoritarians and you quote trump as saying it's funny about the relationships i have the tougher and meaner they are the better i get along with them you know explain that to me today uh someday okay the easy ones are the ones i maybe don't like as much or don't get along with as much so so bob explain that to us the trump is often at odds with our allies but he seems genuinely close to despots like erdogan and and kim jong un who you mentioned earlier and and vladimir putin why it's not that he seems he is as you know it's in the constitution the president controls foreign affairs he and the secretary of state decide what our relations are going to be with countries and uh trump has picked putin he's picked kim jong-un as you say the uh leader the despotic leader of north korea he picked the crown prince of saudi arabia mbs who according to the cia ordered the execution of jamal khashoggi a journalist who was doing work for my newspaper the washington post and this is who trump is working with and he won't work with somebody very well like angel merkel in germany and these are the old relationships we have as i i mean this is this is a part of this that is part of the catastrophe uh trump if secretary of defense mattis is quoted saying because trump is always criticizing allies why do we help south korea why do we pay for all of their these 32 000 people that we uh we have i'm sorry 32 000 u.s troops in south korea and uh he said we are suckers we are fools to do this the same with uh the force in afghanistan and iraq he always wants to reduce it the generals say look it's not that we want to have a war it's that we these are insurance policies that guarantee or help prevent uh additional terrorist attacks or instability particularly uh in the middle the middle east he will he will not that doesn't matter to him think of this moment now we are in what the end of september right uh a very short time to the election joe biden the democratic nominee he probably cannot go abroad as the democratic nominee sometimes the nominees of the other party have gone abroad and they get in trouble because the president will say now wait a minute i'm in charge of foreign affairs you can't even go uh have conversations with world leaders and uh so trump totally controls this he decides it is his authority under the constitution and um what have we got the face of the united states is sketched out and set in concrete by donald trump go to germany go to spain go anywhere and say what do you think about donald trump and they also tremble and worry what's going on our alliances like nato which has been the pillar of stability in the world after world war ii and trump just scorns it and says we've got to get more money from people sometimes i think he views his job not as being president and leader but as chief financial officer and he wants to go around with the tin cup and get money from our allies getting them to spend more for defense and i think that's reasonable but in the process you do not want to alienate them and yes what do you think is at the root of his exceptionally close relationship with vladimir putin um it's strange and i quote dan coats the head intelligence person somebody who'd been a republican senator from indiana close ally with vice president pence i quote uh dan coats saying they went through all the intelligence they went through the deep cover sources that intercepts because they thought something's going on there's some unfavorable on maybe even illegal relationship that trump has with putin they found no hard evidence of that but quotes the coach still tells other people he said but even though there's no proof i cannot shake the idea that putin has something on donald trump which is again another exceptional revelation here uh you alluded earlier uh bob to the conclusion you make in the book your last words of the book which are uh trump is not the right man for the job you've covered nine presidents um we mentioned i mentioned earlier is there anyone else aside from perhaps richard nixon to whom you would apply those words wouldn't come close mark and uh that is a conclusion reached uh on overwhelming evidence uh out of trump's own mouth out of documents and diaries and we we are in a position as somebody said to me said you know you say is the wrong man for the job that kind of understates it and perhaps that's the case but that's my conclusion and i typed it as i was doing the epilogue as you know you're writing books and you have evidence documents you've got thoughts and out in totality trump is the wrong man for the job i was kind of surprised at myself i checked with my wife elsa walsh publisher john carp at simon and schuster my two trusted and hardworking assistants evelyn duffy and steve riley and i said what do you think and they knew all the information all the interviews not just with trump but with key people in the administration uh and an authoritative report of what went on and they said um it was it was fascinating for me they spoke with one voice and said this is a book about truth how do you not write the truth as you see it you can't you have an obligation at this point and after the book came out lots of people lots of friends have said to me said of course you had to write that if you had not said you would join the chorus of republican senators who know that he's the wrong man for the job but won't say publicly you can't hide as a author or as a journalist you can't hide in silence when you're trying to write about truth now people may disagree with me people uh that's fine that's my conclusion and i'm just not i can't in silence i do i think that i'm 77 years old and there would be no justification to my wife and my assistants and my publisher and quite frankly people who read the book they're going to say well how does this end what does he really think and so that's the choice i made i also understand that people may disagree with that and think that uh is the wrong course to take but that's the one i that's the one i chose well we end on a very sober note but it's a very sobering time bob woodward thank you very much for being here and congratulations on on rage and thank you for the great work you do thank you on behalf of the lbj library and our co-hosts the harry ransom center and the ut school of journalism and media thanks to our guest bob woodward signed copies of bob woodward's book rage while they last are now available at lbjstore.com if you liked what you saw tonight please join the friends of the lbj library to be invited to all of our programs upcoming speakers include former secretary of state james baker along with new york times chief white house correspondent peter baker and the new yorkers susan glasser and the co-host of abc's the view sunny hostin and much much more thanks for joining us see you next time

Channel: TheLBJLibrary

Views: 26,964

Keywords: An Evening With, Bob Woodward, LBJ Presidential Library, Harry Ransom Center, School of Journalism and Media at The University of Texas at Austin, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Rage, journalism, Mark K. Updegrove, Friends of the LBJ Library, American political writers, investigative journalist, best-seller lists, Robert Upshur Woodward

Id: ewU9JKKe0ow

Length: 42min 15sec (2535 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 02 2020