Woodward Fools Trump—Twice

It's not surprising to learn that Trump played down the pandemic in his interviews with Bob Woodward. But it is shocking he talked to him for another book.

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So I was almost done with this “news”letter when the Woodward story broke. We try not to do fast “hot takes” around here, but it just feels weird not to say something about all this. So I’m calling an audible and doing this on the fly. 

I am not surprised that Trump admitted to playing down the pandemic, because we already knew that. He said the virus would disappear. He admitted that he didn’t want COVID-stricken cruise ship passengers to disembark because it would make the numbers look bad. He said it would go to zero. In June, he said it was “fading away.” In July, he said it was “under control.”  

But as we learned this afternoon, Trump admitted to Woodward—in February—that COVID was much worse than the flu, saying it was “much more deadly.” 

Yet on March 9, he was pushing the “it’s-just-the-flu” narrative:

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  1. Avatar photo
    Cole

    Woodward is going to write his books whether the president is interviewed or not. I don't think the outcome is going to be good no matter whether the president allows the interview or not. I certainly don't fault the president for trying to color the writing and for getting his point across.

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  2. Barry Morrell

    Jonah: I don't think you know what you are talking about regarding the pandemic.

    You say that arguably thousands of lives could have been saved had Woodward spoken out months ago. Had he done so, you say, the government could have acted more quickly and more decisively to slow the spread of Covid-19. How so (in other than vague terms)?

    Are you talking about the federal government? if so, you must be talking about the executive branch - Trump, Pence, Fauci, Birks and the rest of the pandemic team. According to Fauci, everyone on the team was on the same page and knew how serious the problem was. So, how would Woodward's speaking out sooner or Trump being candid about the pandemic have changed the Trump administration's response?

    Perhaps, you think that it would have been appropriate to push the panic button. If Woodward had spoken out, maybe the NY Times, Washington Post, CNN, etc. could have helped out by painting an end-of-world scenario.

    Surely, you don't think that Congress could have made things better. At the time, Nancy Pelosi was back in San Francisco's Chinatown telling us that Covid-19 was not a big deal. Chuck Schumer echoed the same words. Maybe we should blame Trump for keeping Pelosi and Schumer in the dark (As a savvy Washington veteran, you don't believe that.).

    If Woodward's giving an earlier warning would not have changed the federal government's response, maybe more lives would have been saved by state government action. But just how could Cuomo and Murphy have done better had Woodward tipped them off?

    Let's see. Half of all Covid-19 deaths were people 78 years old or older. 80% of all deaths were people at least 65 years old. 40% of all deaths occurred in nursing homes. Had Trump only advised these people to wear masks, socially distance, and not attend rallies (or protests), think of all the lives that could have been saved. Trump is truly loathsome.

    One other thing. He gave all this interview time to Woodward because, as Jonah is fond of saying, Trump is a dumb bastard.

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  3. Avatar photo
    Richard Cheverton

    We got conned by the media and the governing class on Covid. Once the Big Media started to panic, no politician was able to resist the desire to go to extremes in the name of...well, that narrative changed just about every day. "Bend the curve" was the last feeble attempt to inject sanity into the panic. It was quickly stuffed down the memory hole. Who really knows why we're all wearing masks and "socially distancing" and forbidden to go to certain businesses, which are granted the privilege (in many places) of operating at 25% of capacity...does anyone really understand the rationale for these diktats that would have made a Soviet commissar blush?

    No pol wants deaths pinned on him or her; so the natural thing to do was to go to extremes. The "modeling" epidemiologists (for example at University of Washington and the Bozo in the UK), were only too happy to pour gasoline on the fire, pumping out predictions that no one in the media was equipped to comprehend, much less question. It was a disaster. It produced a depression (among the lower classes; not many in the professional classes felt the pain).

    Poor Trump; his initial impulse was totally correct: avoid panic until we actually understand what the hell we're dealing with. With every media outlet screaming apocalypse, he finally caved, thanks to lousy counsel from the likes of Dr. Fauci. Once again, Trump played and then betrayed by the permanent government. Poor sap.

    Covid hit a weird nerve in the body politic; it will take a genius author (of the caliber of, say, Robert Caro) five years to write the actual history of the episode. It will be an embarrassment. It will probably rank up there with "Missile gap," and "Gulf of Tonkin," and "weapons of mass destruction." Those unleashed terrible consequences; but this gambit by the political class has an even more evil payload: a proof of concept exercise in neo-Reichstag herding of the credulous public into giving up a whole laundry-list of formerly inalienable rights, ranging from rights of assembly, abrogations by states of contracts, unilateral wielding of emergency powers (six months and counting), unlimited power to "mandate" masks absent solid science, micro-management of businesses, clear preferences for one sort of business over others, interference with religious expression. Worst: with the connivance of social media giants, the regulation and banning of dissent.

    Not a bad six months' work. And it ain't over yet. In fact, Biden promises an immediate national shutdown if elected. Find that in the Constitution, if you have a moment.

    And now, in the face of all this sinister stuff, Mr. Goldberg takes a big chunk of time (and brainpower) to yap about some "issue" that will only serve to make Bob Woodward another pile of bucks. Well, gotta write about something; and there's that pesky deadline.




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  4. Scroop Moth

    Mr. President, do not talk to the police. Give them your name and address. Don't tell them anything.

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    Jason Gibson

    I agree Jonah.........about all of it.........but I'm pretty angry at everyone who has contributed to the suffering of 2020 (Trump, Whitmer, Cuomo, Gal Gadot) I can now add Mr. Woodward.

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  6. Avatar photo
    Michael

    Let us follow Woodward's conclusion to it's logical extreme. If Trump's lack of drive on COVID action are felonious, Nancy Pelosi's actions to block Trump's border control actions are ... what genocidal? Thus if we follow Woodward and try to impeach Trump yet again, we'd be remiss if we didn't also clap Auntie Nancy in irons and frog march her into Dan Haag.

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  7. deathtomcmansions

    One other thought re Woodward holding off: There is a real possibility that revealing the tapes in Mar would have either caused trump to make it worse, or it would have been lost in the noise at the height of the initial onslaught. Thus having no life-saving impact.

    Given the need to make it clear why trump needs to be emphatically rejected, there's a case to be made that by bringing it all out clearly as (some) of the covid mistakes are begining to be analyzed, he contributes to keeping trump's failures front and center to remind voters just how bad it is. That also has huge potential impact, probably more so than had it come out in Mar.

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    Josh Blumenthal

    "The problem is that he couldn't stay in character." Actually, Jonah, the problem is that he did stay in character. He couldn't help himself. He's the scorpion on the turtle's back.

    Regarding Woodward, I had the same reaction, saw it as a moral miss.

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  9. deathtomcmansions

    Considering how trump has completely destroyed his credibility even before the pandemic, even if he said something about what he was thinking, who knows whether or not it's just him playing some sort of cruel game. I agree with JG that he almost certainly wasn't capable of nor willing to put in the effort to be that Machiavellian. But if I were an author of Woodward's stature I'd sure like to see if there were other actions/words that were corroborated by others that would support the narrative so there wouldn't be tweets along the line of "what an idiot, he believed me." Not to mention, if trump supporters chose to believe that Woodward was out to get their guy again, might it not have even further exacerbated the anti-mask/politicization issue? Seems Catch-22ish to me.

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    Robert Knudson

    I enjoyed the column but disagree on the morality of Woodward's holding back of Trump's comments.
    Undermining the President mid response to the pandemic could cause more harm than leaking his true opinion on the virus at the time.
    It was a novel virus and a lot was still uncertain in February. Trump isn't the nation's chief medical advisor.
    His understating of the medical threat didn't indicate he wasn't taking it seriously as a policy matter (although he wasn't). WHO, the CDC and other medical authorities were the relevant information on the medical threat.
    Trump's failure to adequately oversee the US response to Covid is easy to judge now but was not a certainty at that time.
    Ultimately I can't fault Woodward for putting his trust in the government response and being unwilling to undermine that.

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