Bob Woodward’s "FEAR: Trump in The White House"

um I thought I'd start Bob it's it's an honor to be doing this with you here tonight I should say and I and I love this book maybe just every couple tweets just to get started I just want to take too long must read column by Bob Woodward explaining how Obama pushed for sequestration and promised no tax increase only the Obama White House can get away with attacking Bob Woodward thank you to Bob Woodward who said etcetera etcetera now who could have written those yeah Trump yeah but in even last month he called me and he wondered why I had been interviewed for the book and I had tried many people and he said well you know people are afraid to talk to him he acknowledged a little of this but then he said I've said you've always treated me fairly now the book is out he's changed his mind yeah for I thought that was an extraordinary tape of that that interview with him I want to ask you about that in a second but one thing you can say about Trump for sure is he's media savvy he's incredibly is a massive consumer of media I think you'd talk about him watching six to eight hours of television a day he actually does seem to read the New York Times and other papers he's he knows what background means he knows he knows his way around the media how could he be so naive as to be surprised I mean do you think there's any is he is he sincerely monsier and in saying that he thinks he was done wrong or is this just just as usual act you know easier to describe the creation of the universe there's a lot of uncertainty about you know what is driving him but one of the themes of the book is there is an alternative reality which he has which he creates and he just you know has certain views and the scene after scene were one of the people in the white house where did you get that he said well I've always thought that for 30 years well and then he'll just say if you disagree with me you're wrong and that's it and there's not have been they bring in Gary Cohen who's the chief economic adviser to Trump in the White House it was it been the president of little investment bank called goldman sachs and had literally made billions of dollars for his clients hundreds of millions of dollars for himself and if you know anything about goldman sachs it's data-driven if you know they'll bring in piles of evidence and studies and reports economic data and he would take things like this to trump and it was just you know i don't care about that i they come in on the World Trade Organization it sounds like an abstraction but it's it's real and Trump says this is the world's worst organization we never win a case and Cohen says well gee you United States has one eighty five point seven percent and not just eighty five percent but eighty five point seven and Trump I don't care I don't care I that's not right and we'll call your people call your trade representative no I'm not going to do that so there's just a you know the veil comes down and he's he's going to live in in that cave that he's created and there's this tremendous simplification of the world I think it one point in the book you reproduced his handwriting which finally it distills his view of trade trade is bad yes that's his view yeah and and you know this is the nationalism this is the isolation this is the now he never in fairness to him never said that but he actually wrote it out in trying to rub a speech and if you dig into this you see that's really kind of his view that somehow if we have a trade deficit with the country they are stealing money from us which 99.9% of ikana economists would say is not the case but Trump found two who would agree with him Beetle Navarro and Wilbur Ross the Commerce Secretary and so Trump and those two people and left right Democrats Republicans and just you know say you you shouldn't do these things and it's the wall yeah and that there is there's lots of in the book about trade and it's it does seem to be one area where he has had a consistent view say what you will about it over a long period of time and he's constantly trying to act on his views to pull out of the us-korea trade agreement and to pull out of NAFTA to attack the WTO to add more tariffs on China right now and there people around him other than those two who are fighting a rearguard action against them yes but he says no I'm gonna do it and they can't stop him and he calls the like on the issue of steel tariffs which just make no economic sense I mean they're documents I have that I quote from from the Pentagon from the State Department saying we'd steal tariffs don't work don't help and so he sneaks the steel the steel executives into the White House in March of this year and announces steel tariffs and even general Kelly who's the chief of staff didn't know that Trump was doing this so as people try to stop him he forges ahead yeah that that tape you put up on the Washington Post of explaining your claiming that he hadn't didn't know that you wanted to interview him was was fascinating but his view seemed to be that your book was going to be wrong on the facts and this has been his view since it came out because it did not include the fact that he's the greatest president of all time yeah I left that out if you included it he'd still be saying Woodward is fair everyone knows yeah well but you know what this is you drive toward what's inside him what's it what's it all about one thought I had is all presidents and the Trump is the ninth president that I've written about and Ken Burns mentioned to me some time ago said you know you will have written books and journalism in the Washington Post on 20% of our presidents 949 I I wasn't around for Calvin Coolidge but I hope you get another one to write about very soon let's see I we don't know we don't know people didn't think Trump could be elected it was all improbable but there's something when you read biographies or autobiographies of presidents there's they all start talking about one at one point or another about destiny that somehow this was not an accident and there is a self validation when you're elected president gives you you know I know how to do this in Trump's case everyone was telling him no it will never work it's not going to happen and he wins he'd never been on the City Council he had never done anything in government so it puts his feet deeper in more cement about I'm right I've got it and all presidents I think had the disease of isolation and I think he in a much greater way and this is why in the book you see people close to him taking papers off his desk or having to tell him things or argue with him he's created this front world and he is also conducting a war on truth yeah whenever somebody comes in with something and something is true it's warfare if he doesn't like it or disagrees and how do I think as the press we are still dealing and haven't figured out how to navigate this problem of how do you cover a president where there is no presumption that what he says is true because every president probably lies to some degree but you have a newspaper The Washington Post has has four thousand two hundred and seventy two counting and lies or misrepresentations and so it's it's something you're you're exactly right that's kind of stumped the press I mean counting it is not enough you have to write about the consequences of not dealing with reality and I think the consequences are grave and I think that based on spending a year and a half trying to really look at the granularity of the Trump decision-making presidency that it the people who know the most consider him a threat to national and national security and financial security yeah I mean David Farenthold appeal of surprise winning reporter at the post um did a brilliant thing when instead of trying to prove the Trump haven't contributed to charities before running for president he tried to prove that he had contributed to charity and couldn't prove it and I sometimes think we have the same problem with inverting our assumption with with every other president it's been and presume truthful until proven to be not telling the truth but with Trump we can't assume that so how do we recalibrate around that and I think the answer is in depth of reporting specifically what I found is let's not look at the whys let's not look at the Muller investigation both of those are very important but ultimately what does he do as president what he outdid the North Korean policy develop how about Afghanistan how about the Middle East how about taxes trade all of these core issues but what's really define life for people in this country and it's it's it's quite a bobsled ride when you get you see it some you know I hate to say this but this is an analytical point he does not understand his own best interest often yeah well clearly I mean you're you're famous for your neutrality and letting your reporting speak for itself this book I have to say having read the vast majority of your books felt a little different I mean starting with the cover you know was hard not to see this as the invert inversion of the Obama hope poster you know but I felt like was that that was conscious wasn't it I mean you know one word for Trump that's fear I mean it just felt like from the very first page I felt like I knew it you thought well actually there's some good things in there and they're like the dealings in the Middle East he actually develops a policy and goes to Saudi Arabia and builds an alliance with Saudi Arabia with the Gulf Cooperation Council countries with the Israel - you know this is a very strong alliance against Iran which is one of the great worries so I tried to keep it neutral and repertory 'el but fear comes from his own mouth when Bob Costas young great reporter at the post and I interviewed Trump two and a half years ago when he was on the verge of getting the Republican nomination and we asked him we were asking some broad interesting questions and addressing the issue of power because the presidency really is about power isn't it and quoted some Obama comment about real power is not having to use violence and Trump you know finally it said it was almost a Shakespearean moment where he said real power is I don't like to use the word fear and the way it was Hamlet his aside to the audience of this is what I really think and it's about this is how you exercise power you scare the hell out of people and you see a lot of that in the book you see a lot of that in Trump's performance and life before he became president but there's a clear message here that the man in the White House is dangerous and that no one can protect us from it yes and that and that's the words of the people and the actions of the people who were there and it's it's vivid in scene after scene and he it's it's most interesting because presidents I think all of them live in the unfinished business of their predecessor like Obama told Trump you're what's going to keep you up at night is North Korea and at the same time presidents inherit a framework this the way business was done and you can change it but you can't abrogate it you can't destroy it and he's tried to and there's this meeting over at the Pentagon in July which is a stunner because Gary Cohen national security the economic advisor and mattis the Secretary of Defense they formed an alliance and they say we've got to get Trump over here we've got to it's kind of like an off-site at the Greenbrier but we're gonna do it at the Pentagon because there are no televisions there's no distraction and he can't call out to his secretary Madeleine and they they try to educate him and they say there's as mattis says it's a it's a great line the great gift from the greatest generation is this world this rule-based international order and Tillotson then Secretary of State says this keeps the peace and Trump just doesn't want us to sign up to any of the old things and just insults everyone gets angry discards won't listen and at the end maddis the Secretary of Defense it's just deflated it's just like you know we tried and this is when Tillerson says as accurately reported by NBC that he's a should I say it effing [ __ ] and you didn't say yeah but he said it very plainly and that's so that what do you manage power I mean that was one of the scenes Bob were just my jaw was on the floor because there you have the most senior and distinguished military leaders in the country and Trump you know we know from elsewhere in the book he he sort of prefers people in uniform I mean he likes military leaders and gives them more respect than he gives anybody else and in that meeting he treats them the way bad people treat Busboys and restaurants I mean he is he is just he just is so contemptuous of them and and dismissive of them and I mean deflating would be would be you know a nice word but his behavior of them is despicable if he doesn't give them respect is there anyone who can get respect from Donald Trump well it's but again this is why fear fits and it is also I kind of think from studying all these presidents that the most important characteristic a president can have is the ability to listen and grow and understand and accommodate reality while directing the policy their way and he just doesn't want to learn doesn't want to listen so many of these people who work for Trump justify working for him by telling themselves and presumably telling other people and telling you it'll be worse if I weren't there we are protecting the public from his worst actions and his worst instincts what do you think of that justification but it's actually more in the case the the prologue where Gary Cohen takes this letter that would get us out of the trade agreement with South Korea you know it's a trade agreement but it's not there's a military agreement there's very secret intelligence partnerships that give this country a degree of security that people don't understand and this is all linked together and so if you pull out of the trade agreement you can start the dotted line to nuclear war yeah exactly and if there's a job the president has is to not play around with that I remember talking to interviewing President Obama wants about this and he said everything is about keeping a nuclear weapon from going off in an American city that is and he said all our intelligence operations are geared toward making sure that doesn't happen and Trump is cavalier about this but but Gary Cohen instead of saying well I'm just kind he says gotta protect the country this is you you begin the unraveling and God knows what's gonna happen and the same thing happens with the trade agreement NAFTA there's a letter you know summarily we're getting out of it and Cohen takes it Rob Porter the staff secretary is doing all of this and has told people and I quoted it saying a third of his time is preventing bad things from happening but you know with my question again to you with what do you Altima Talitha that justification this is an issue I've been struggling with since the beginning of the administration at one level I think were worse off with Gary Cohn gone and HR McMaster gone and you know I'd rather have relative relatively competent people around him at the same time I kind of feel like they're kidding themselves well you it's not you don't get to take a college course in philosophy when you were confronted with that moment oh my god this is on the desk and he could get it formally drafted in Simon and so you have to act and I think these are acts of conscience and courage it but it's not something that you say let's run the government this way let's have the president there's the Trump track and then there's the same track where we're going to have people coming around taking papers not implementing the policy and literally and the chief of staff general Kelly has to send out a memo to everyone in the White House that says no more spur-of-the-moment decisions no more seat-of-the-pants decisions nothing is final until there's a normal process of review by cabinet officers and a decision memo to sign assigned by the President and of course this could never thanks off yeah yeah and so you it's a little of it's the Wild West yeah and given the stakes internationally and to the global economy and the American economy it's not I I would argue if you're a trump supporter and you read this neutrally and you realize that it's meticulously reported you would you would have to have pause yeah this question about protecting the country from Trump's worst instincts is also the theme of the the anonymous New York Times op-ed first I got to ask you before someone else in the audience did I won't ask you who wrote it I'll give you my oh I have it written down right oh yeah yeah no I'm just gonna give you my theory it's actually not my favorites this hearing that will solitaire wrote in Slate but I found very persuasive he thinks it's John Huntsman the ambassador to Russia whose views are a match who doesn't have much loyalty to Trump and whose denial was was a very non-denial denial what do you think it wouldn't think it might have we might be right I don't know but it's important who that is and if it's the ambassador to Russia it's not as if it's somebody key in the White House is we well no ambassadors are isolated also and if that person had come to me and said gee I'd like you to append this is an op ed statement from me anonymously in your book I would say wait a minute details the the building blocks of journalism are details what exactly happened who was there what was said what was driving this and the absence of that leaves me kind of well well use this you don't doubt that there's a real Hiroto I don't because I don't think the New York Times would take that chance but who's that real person see in doing a book like this the method is to go to people and say okay I want the full story I want your notes and what documents I've gotten a your a confidential source I'm not going to name you I'm gonna use everything you say I'm gonna cross-check it within an inch of its life and then you can go and see what happens in the Situation Room or the Oval Office at a specific time with specific issues and a kind of generalized statement I I'm not wild about that now you know maybe it's millennia or maybe it's maybe it's somebody who really knows Trump I'm not seriously suggesting that I'm just saying some it may be somebody in the White House who's there who's a witness the most important element in describing what really goes on is having witnesses witnesses who are there or have Diaries who will that you as a journalist or book author can build a relationship of trust with I mean whoever wrote it it seems like a bit of a miscalculation miscalculation in the way that some of the people who spoke to you may be feeling they miscalculated in that you say I want to tell everybody that we're working to protect you from our dangerously paranoid president but you do it in a way that Spurs his paranoia and his dangerousness and makes him more dangerous yeah well that's you know it's it's part of it it is what it is but it would it doesn't meet the threshold of the kind of journalism that I think is really important what you specific let's talk about your your method a little bit and and how it's evolved but just to start out I was making a little note as I was reading of you know probable sources and for your book Steve Bana and Rob Porter Lindsey Graham John Dowd Gary Cohn Tom Bossard a little less former homeland security people so these these are not very well these people are not very well hidden their thoughts are described the question is and I'm not asking you to confirm that they're sources but when when oh I'm so glad yes yeah cuz I because I know you give them up pretty easily maybe I come back in 50 years but um but it's it's it's not hard to read this and have it have a strong opinion about who the sources probably are people are gonna talk to you and not do a better job of hiding why not just talk on the record why not be quoted why not put actual quotation marks around their remarks well there are actual quotation remarks around lots of people including President Trump that they are you know these as you've seen people deny some of these things and it's vague or it's it doesn't have much weight these are our kind of job security denials that where people don't they want to protect themselves but they want to talk and this goes back to the Watergate coverage of the eighteen books that I've done involve using people who are confidential sources who are participants in witnesses yeah I mean I've never seen more ritualistic denials than in this case I mean it almost just seems like you know Trump said you have to deny it they go through the motion with a you know very they don't deny anything specifically they say the books inaccurate or doesn't portray what I would I think and you know what are what are they what do they expect you to think when you see that that you know they have to do that you know I'm sympathetic because again this is not these are big decisions people make to say I'm gonna trust you with my story and I'm gonna tell you what I witnessed and I have interviews with you ask about method I tape with their knowledge so in 50 years somebody's gonna get these boxes of hundreds of hours of interviews and some graduate student is gonna look through it and is gonna say oh my god that's you know that's a document oh this is a witness this is the person talking and if it's a method that we used in the Nixon case that I've used in the Supreme Court book or the Pentagon books or the war books or Obama books and I know I remember when doing interview with Obama for the first book Bush Obama swarms about his decisions in Afghanistan and near the end he said you have better sources than I do now that that's not true because but I've been able to focus on this and he actually said have you ever thought of becoming the CIA director it was not a job offer well your files probably rival Hoover's at this point pardon your fought your files rival Hoover's at this point no no they're not like Coover's it's they're not about somebody's personal life they're about the business of government this is a very serious undertaking but you can get really close to what goes on and that has to do with trusting people people trust in you so I I understand the dynamic here there's a kind of Washington denial machine out there and during water game we called it the non-denial denial and it sounds like a denial but it really is not technically technically untrue talk a little bit about how your method has evolved since since Watergate you get you get your sources to come to your house right I wish I could get a source to come to my house well you know what other than that you can and they'll do it why do you do that well not just the real important is to get to their house and I frankly realized in doing some reporting on this that I was getting quite lazy yeah I have people come over for dinner it's nice you can't you you advanced the ball a little bit but there was a moment in this when I called somebody from the White House at home at 11 o'clock and said you know you said we'd talk yeah yeah yeah we will you know the brush-off happens all that time poster yes yes we'll do it oh I said well how about now and he said now are you crazy it's 11 o'clock at night and I said well I'm four minutes from your house and he said how do you know where I live and I said that's easy that's the easy part okay come on over and then you there's a natural comfort people have in their own home you asked you have any documents no no I don't take any documents from the White House and then in the third interview any documents well yeah let me go upstairs and check and come down with you know boxes have documents it's when we did the book on the Supreme Court in 1970 all the clerks oh never have documents and of course everyone you don't clerk at the Supreme Court or work in the White House and not just take a little memorabilia and that kind of memorabilia or a diary people have Diaries and so forth and so getting into the home is really important and it gives you potential access to the kind of authoritative paperwork that will it's very comforting to have somebody tell you something and then see a memo that says exactly the same thing one more question about this but I want to open it up for questions and their microphones on either side where she said we're taking questions live not on not on note cards today so if you line up we'll call in a second but just as a to follow up that that point Bob well people get ready to ask in all the President's Men which I've reread recently there's there's some different nothing you sometimes surprised people by knocking on their doors at night and a lot of the reporting comes through discomfort what you're describing sounds more like a process of getting people very comfortable so that if there is discomfort still a part of your process there was not more but it starts his discomfort and then it transitions to comfort and that's exactly what happened in all the Presidents mint I remember one of the bush books going there was a general who would not talk and kept nagging him emails intermediaries nothing found out where he lived in the Washington area went to his house without an appointment knocked on the door and he opened the door and looked at me and said are you still doing this [Laughter] and he meant it and but then you learned the CIA people always said you have to let the silence suck out the truth so I just poker-faced and they looked at me got too disappointed look I I think in himself could come on in and talked for a couple of hours and helped immensely lesson there we're not showing up I think our method is driven us to the Internet more and kind of what's your comment on this and I know people will sit in the White House you ask a question and they have six deputy press secretary as well gee that sentence is too revealing let's let's launder it and so you wind up getting BS I can't not ask you how do you compare the Trump of fear to the Nixon of the final days there are scenes in there right after Muller is appointed where Trump is just beside himself and you see him in the White House and he doesn't sit down he's just on his feet all almost all the day going from the Oval Office to the dining room where he has his television he's watching these tivoing things you know ha how did this happen how did it now there's a special council investigating me they're gonna look at my finances and and one of the people likens it to Nixon's final days that it's in the paranoid zone it's it's it's pretty scary and Trump says you know I'm the President of the United States I can fire anybody I want I I have this authority well actually he does I think the the real one of the questions pulsing through this is what does it mean and I think one of the things that means is that this is a and when I when Trump called less I said this to him we're at a pivot point in history and he said right and we've we really are at a pivot point in history and that we better really think about where all this is going what who's in charge who has authority how his presidential power being exercised what is the is there an oversight of this process and it's a time to because there's this contest for what's true and he's launched it almost daily a war on truth and that's that's not great for democracy in in 1974 through otter Gate we had a crisis and the system worked yes - what's your level of confidence in the system this time and I'm sorry I'm going to get to the right a few hey you have to have confidence in it but the system only works when people rise above party and in the case of setting up the Senate Watergate committee in early 1973 senator Ervin who was the chairman the only all that they had were the stories that Carl and I had written and some investigation Teddy Kennedy's subcommittee had done and I remember going to see senator Ervin he called me up and said we'd like your sources and I said that you know I can't do that and he said well we're gonna go ahead and the resolution passed 77 to zero dozens of republicans voting for that to investigate their president I think in the Senate today if you had a resolution to say let's keep the colors in the American flag you would not get a 77 to 0 vote there would be some objection someplace all right let me ask you to make your questions brief and to the point and avoid any editorializing and let's start on this side mr. Woodward for I'm a huge admirer I'm a student of journalism I'm from Brazil and this year we're gonna have presidential elections as you know next month and a true problem that I'm observing there's people are starting to become very true believers in well their politics and their ideology or even their ideas and I think from your experience both of you what how can journalism improve in the sense of like showing the facts like even if people are really true believers well get it right and that takes time and you know true believers there are lots of them on lots of sides of politics my just temperamental attitude is you know be suspicious of true believers but but your way of dealing with an environment in which people increasingly choose which truth to believe is to carry on and and pursue the truth and not address not try to solve that problem because you can't that's a better answer I want to thank you and bless you and hope it's the tipping point that's for your new partner today one of the spawn I think it was Eric said that you was Beavis or Butthead one of those people said that you did this for the shekels which some of us feel is anti-semitic since I don't think you're Jewish except for hanging out with Carl Bernstein could you please comment on that in you know actually I am NOT Jewish but I the idea that anyone would talk like that I just you know I we shouldn't have comments like that from anyone and he's it's it's unfortunate but I think you can't kind of overreact to it I think you kind of have to say okay what does it mean what did you know what did Eric trump do who is he and there still lots of questions about that and the investigation so I'm not I'm not worried and I think this kind of taking the emotion expressed by somebody else and having an emotional reaction to it gets you off track mister it's a privilege thank you and do you anticipate any of the people you've discussed coming forward before the 2020 election it seems that if they're that concerned about the fate of the country they would want to speak out before he gets another four years well people have spoken that in this book and it's I it's important to not get tangled up in G is somebody gonna write an editorial without specifics in the New York Times I think that's not the real issue I think is what's authoritative what's going on and then there you you said at one point something happened in the book in your jaws and on the floor I think there are about 10 or 15 in the in the book a great since many people think that Trump is a threat to our national security do you believe that you know GOP politicians and flu intial ones like Ryan and Ryan and McDonough McConnell are traitors to our country no look they you know we have the political system and see that's the yeah that should be taken away from them okay well that's your view I think the remedy is to not use Trump's language about other people I just I think that I've you know you can be critical of people and this let's Jack up the rhetoric and this fear I think okay we know what the Russians um let's come back over here thank you sorry obviously trump is still president the molar investigation is still going on I was wearing when did you know that you were done with this book when you can settle on you know also to any roadblocks you had in this Friday when your you had a lead and you thought you were there but you couldn't get the sources to completely fulfill the story yeah do you work in publishing it's it's a great question and the answer is on something like this you're in a way never done but you have to cut it off and say you've got enough information I have the wonderful benefit of a support system at the Washington Post where I still work at Simon and Schuster the publishers and you know they are all these people say I you know they say individually and collectively we have your back and dig into these things and there also is just a quality when you've got about 350 pages that's a book and yeah that simple yeah and there will there be another Trump book I mean you start the next one as soon as you finish Wow yeah you have the you have created precedent for this don't know if you know you don't know where you know who knows the end of this story or boy I sure don't and so you know but we need to keep working even when the book is done based on your book and all the research and experience that you have what do you think is possible that could happen as a result of the investigation and do you think it's possible that nothing can happen in other words like nothing will happen in the Muller investigation yeah sometimes nothing happens in the the book John Dowd who is Trump's lawyer for eight months who eventually resigns because he's trying to convince Trump you can't testify because you won't tell the truth you are incapable lifts I mean isn't that I mean that that that's a sieve donnie seem like he went there with Trump yeah yeah they had a practice session in the White House which is one of the most fascinating things I've ever written and you hear it John Dowd the lawyers plane Muller and asking Trump questions and Trump flies or makes things up or goes ballistic and finally says see you can't testify and Trump you mean I'm not a good witness no you are a terrible witness you I you know there's a legal obligation for a lawyer to not as he said I can't sit next to you and let you lie or to fall into a perjury trap and it's it's it's quite moving and the the final line of the book is Dowd concluding but not one in two in Seoul but concluding Europe [ __ ] liar yeah and it's a it's a one of those moments where you go wow that's you know that's the lawyer that's the guy on his side yeah that's the guy he's paying yeah yeah a hundred thousand dollars a month which is you know pretty good for Trump and at least he paid it for a month I understand the rare bill he paid yes did any of your sources in all their months alone with Trump in the White House describe any private moments with him when he might have just for a moment confessed to his deepest fears I mean the obvious fear is that the Muller investigation will lead to his impeachment but fears of being betrayed as a Russian mole or Russia has fears of happened I think I might nobody ever described any private moment in which in which Trump confessed to his own fears about where this might end up even losing the respect of his kids or something well no but their moments were he displays intense anxiety about the investigation there you know it's gonna go on forever if they're gonna look at everything they're gonna look at my finances and so forth and he also acknowledges to people in the book at times and those people are named that maybe Jared Kushner his son-in-law should not be there working in the White House that there's too much of a conflict potentially and so but the moment of seeing the the Muller investigation is and it's the lawyer John Dowd who concludes that Muller played him Dowd and trump for suckers to get them to turn over all the evidence in the documents and witnesses and there is a telling moment where a doubt realizes my god we'd been had and he goes to trump and he said you were right we can't trust Muller yeah I mean you you know Muller buy it by all accounts is not his office is not leaking so that that account has to come primarily from one side and it's self-serving in the sense that dad's position is we've been an open book we've given you everything but we don't do we know that's from Muller side do we know that Muller feels they've been that cooperative yeah I mean there's been a lot of reporting on it and I checked this independently and they did give him they did they did give him all this material and so you know that's that's authentic what's an interesting about Muller in the book is he only says a number of things to doubt because most of the time he's just marbled he's just you know poker-faced and but he does when Dowd's pressing him what are you looking for on the obstruction investigation and Muller says we want to find out if he had corrupt intent now that's the the necessary part of an obstruction charge and it's actually the right thing and I think when doubt heard this he was it was bracing moment made it real that they were considering the possibility of bringing a charge like that or that that's that was the investigative trail they were on but somebody you know is it possible this goes nowhere I remember - well the big investigations after Watergate the iran-contra and the Reagan administration the one Lewinsky whitewater investigation and under Clinton and there were mid somebody and my newspaper actually wrote a story the same Reagan was going to be indicted and I went back and looked at all of the investigations after Watergate he talked to Lawrence Walsh who was the independent counsel in that case and he made it very clear to me he was he didn't even think Reagan was dirty and had done anything illegal so you can these things can get all puffed up and you think it's somebody's gonna discover the crime of the century and they don't you need a storytelling witness or tapes yes if I recall correctly when Nixon was unraveling didn't al haig give instructions to most everyone that no matter what Nixon said ray nuclear weapons and all they it couldn't go through I'm sure that today but you have people like general mattis the Pentagon as you said it's country first Kelley that they wouldn't allow Trump to give an order of any type that would they're real Patriots that would threaten the United States well that's a good question I don't have the definitive answer on that but in Watergate it wasn't Al Haig the White House chief of staff it was the Secretary of Defense Schlesinger who put out the word saying if the president calls and said launch call me first do you believe that having talked with these people like Mathis and Kelley and so on that Trump could ever get to that point but if he if he wanted to distract something or that he could you know they they would stop him at some point I don't know the answer to that and you know that's what that's a a big large question it would depend on circumstances and you know what's what's going on the reality is though the president has an incredible there's a concentration of power in that office and he can employ the force as he wants to I remember talking to academics during the George W Bush years and say you know the president can start a war like he has happened said oh no the Constitution is very clear that Congress has to declare war like I said that's not the way it works and on but I said look george w bush can invade Mexico tomorrow if he wants and somebody stood up in agony and said don't give him any ideas they have presidents have incredible power yes first of all I want to thank you very much I just hope that this book will help and Trump's term in office quicker than it should and on that point and other people have spoken about this what if you had to give odds on Trump lasting two more years what would you say the odds are of him being taken out I have that written down two [Laughter] diseases of journalism I'd be interested if you agree where we want to report on the future which of course we don't know and if the future is real hard it's a fair question but to be honest with you I have no [ __ ] idea I agree that's the best answer you know I think I hope I learned the lesson in 2016 that what I thought was going to happen with a with a high degree of likelihood did not happen and I think that showed the value of my predictions and the value of a lot of other people's predictions and so now when people ask me for a prediction i disappoint disappointingly try to offer some kind of analysis but avoid that you know a good line is that one I used easier to describe the creation of the universe yeah because it is yeah yeah I think let's take two more questions and then we should let Bob sign some books but redundant after the last one but I was going to ask you when you live through the whole Watergate crisis with Cole Bernstein and you must have felt at some moment had your aha moment where you thought well this is where the president is going down how has your gut instincts serve you now I know it leads on to the can I give the same answer this side of the room that I gave over there obviously time works against us and the longer this goes on the longer a lot of these abnormalities tend to become the norm and we find ourselves deeper and deeper so basically is how what's your gut been telling you the difference between but you see I try not to operate on my gut and in Watergate Carl realized at a moment he said my god this Nixon's gonna be impeached and we'd written a story about his closest aide John Mitchell campaign manager Attorney General controlling a secret fund for Watergate and other espionage and sabotage activities and Carl turned around said this guy is going to be impeached and I said I I agree but we can never use that word in the newsroom because people will think we're on some sort of crusade and for one year we never used that word and so I would apply the same caution now about what we think this is gonna lead to that or that the answer is we don't know but the job of journalism is to I don't know the Trump actually does read whether he would read a copy of this book I heard for a while they couldn't get a copy at the White House this Simon & Schuster's security was so great but I think if he I'm sure he would be very upset upset because it's a penetration of his business it says this is what he does this is what he thinks this is the nature of the conflict and so forth and I step back as a journalist say that's all we can try to do and then the political system will take over and do what it's going to do and even though there's a lot of anger at the political system system and a lot of a sense of disappointment if not betrayal it it kind of works and that's that's what we have and so I'm not not writing odds about anything or I you know examining my gut Hey and I love it when they opened the door and say are you still doing this because the answer's yes let's make the Salaf question and I'm sorry we couldn't get all of them but please go ahead good evening on the daily yesterday you alluded to some of the events that that came out of your reporting on Watergate so avoiding the the prior questions what do you think are some takeaways from this book that we can bring out to our representatives and congressmen and women to alleviate the fear well I mean that's obviously up to you but this is a as I say in the early and the prologue that there was a nervous breakdown of executive power and having a government with a nervous breakdown I mean do you agree this describes a nervous breakdown on a good number of levels and it's something very different from the kind of chaos and confusion disorganization that has come up in many other White House yes I agree it's a it's a it's a breakdown of every kind of code of normal behavior in a presidential administration and so you know that's what it is and it's you know I mean last I don't can I tell one story this goes back to Watergate but it was a great lesson in January 7 d 3 Carl and I'd written all these stories people didn't believe them in Katherine Graham the publisher owner of the Washington Post invited me to lunch and I knew where she'd supported the publication of the stories and go in to her lunch room and and she starts quizzing me about Watergate and blew my mind with what the boss knew she at one point said oh she'd read something about Watergate in the Chicago Tribune and I thought what the hell meaning the Chicago Tribune for no one in Chicago does Katherine was you know sucking in all the information a management style I later described as mind on hand so if she didn't tell us how to report or what to do and so we get to an important moment and she said well when is all that forth going to come out and I said well there's a cover-up going on the investigations week they're paying the burglars for their silence Carl and I go knock on doors at night and Nixon had just won a massive re-election and so my answer is never and I know I'll never forget the look on her face when I said never and she said pained wounded look she said never don't tell me never I left the lunch a highly motivated but the statement was not a threat it was a statement of purpose and what she said was look we we we signed up for this journalism is high risk we believe our sources and and then she said why do you think we do this and I didn't have an answer and she gave an answer to her own questions and it's a brilliant answer she said because that's the business were in we have to we believe what we've got here we have to triple quadruple our effort to get to the bottom of this and gave a kind of let's go ahead I left the lunch highly-motivated I was 29 years old at that time and and I thought my god the boss really understands the necessity of risk injury it doesn't mean you aren't sure it means that you're taking on the highest authority in the country by yourself essentially so someday we're going to put a plaque in the lobby of the Washington post even though Bezos owns the Washington Post now and the Grahams are not there I think he would approve of this but we're gonna drill it in so no one can take it out gonna be a plaque that will just begin quote and it will say never don't tell me never end quote Katharine Graham well that is a great note to end on and and one I can heartedly support I'm Bob it's it's an honor to talk to you about the new book and I want to thank everybody for the great question for being here thank you about thank you folks in the next room

Channel: 92nd Street Y

Views: 5,144,866

Rating: 4.2899981 out of 5

Keywords: 92Y, 92nd Street Y, bob woodward, fear, trump, donald trump, mueller, investigation, russia, jacob weisberg, watergate, white house

Id: UkrBSUp55Xk

Length: 65min 25sec (3925 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 17 2018