Bob Woodward is best known as one of the legendary journalists whose reporting on the break-ins to the Democratic Convention at the Watergate Hotel and the cover up that followed; led to the resignation of the United States 37th President, Richard Nixon. Woodward has also released a new book chronicling the first two years of the Donald Trump presidency.
Park City Institute brought award winning journalist, best-selling author and investigative reporter Bob Woodward to Park City earlier this month. Woodward spoke about his new book Fear: Trump in the White House.
Woodward says he was denied about six interview requests with Trump, but he tracked down witnesses, documents and notes to write the book.
“Well these are people who are witnesses. I had the luxury of time to chase down notes and specific documents. If you look at the book they are quoted almost endlessly. These are the people in the Whitehouse or in the administration and what I found was the closer people were to President Trump the more worry and anxiety they had about the way he makes decisions on the major policy issues.”
People in the Whitehouse gave Woodward a bounty of accounts of events during the opening years of the administration.
“Gary Cohn, who was the national economic advisor for the president was so alarmed he stole papers from the president’s desk, so he wouldn’t sign them. I actually have a picture in the book of one of the papers that was taken. One of the major issues is the president thinks all the money we’re spending on security arrangements, like our troops in NATO, in Germany, in the Middle East, in South Korea. He thinks that we’re doing this just to support other countries and their military. I have scenes in detail where the Secretary of Defense Mattis and the generals are telling Trump those are the best dollars we spend. Those are mutual security agreements. The secretary of state tells Trump at one meeting these are the agreements we’ve had that have kept the peace for 70 years. Trump does not agree. At one point, Secretary of Defense Mattis is so concerned he says to the president we’re doing all of this to prevent World War III. This is a year into Trump’s presidency. I would argue that job one for a president is to prevent World War III. Particularly the use of nuclear weapons. Here you have the Secretary of Defense having to say this to the president. This information comes from notes of these national security council meetings.”
He also spoke about how frustrating it was that no one was able to uncover Trumps tax returns.
“During the 2016 campaign I spent some time trying to get his tax returns and frankly failed. I think it is a shame that no one succeeded in getting those tax returns. People in the business world, real estate world, and the IRS have told me those tax returns would be road map to what he’s done and who he is. It would almost be like, say somebody from the Senate is running for president and you can’t get the senators voting record. That would be absurd, unacceptable. Well, Trump’s tax returns are in many ways his voting record. To not have that I think is a shame. We should have been more aggressive. I should have been more aggressive. Trump himself should have been more willing to be forthcoming and say, look I’m running to be your leader you need to know the roadmap of my life. Part of that are those tax returns. Quite obviously there are some things in there that he doesn’t want to be public.”
Woodward compared and contrasted the Trump administration with the Nixon administration.
“The Mueller investigation has heated up. It’s got lots of tentacles. I know from the Watergate experience it took two years and two months for the evidence to finally materialize so Republicans turned against President Nixon and essentially forced him to resign. I don’t know whether the quality of evidence exists about Trump but we’re going to find out. There’s lots of suspicious activity but to really prove something about a president you need witnesses that are very strong. You need probably tape recordings or some sort of documents, some sort of trail. You need a story telling witness. Somebody who can take you through it as a narrator like John Dean, Nixon’s whitehouse counsel did in four days of public testimony before the Senate Watergate committee. We haven’t seen anything like that yet, it may exist, but I don’t know the Mueller investigation is very secretive. I looked for material about the Russian story and the collusion and found quite frankly nothing new. Probably need something new for it to have a serious impact on the Trump presidency.”
That’s journalist Bob Woodward, his book is Fear: Trump in the Whitehouse.
