Bob Woodward’s decision to sit on Donald Trump quotes for months and other observations from his new book
Bob Woodward in May 2019. (Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)
President Donald Trump knew about the dangers of the coronavirus back in February. By March, he admitted he was purposefully downplaying the virus to the American people.
Today, the country is on the brink of 200,000 COVID-19 deaths. And counting.
Just when we thought news of the coronavirus in the U.S. could not get any more controversial, a new book by legendary journalist Bob Woodward proves that Trump knew the coronavirus was more deadly than the flu, that it was passed through the air and that Trump “always wanted to play it down.”
It’s all on tape.
The new book called “Rage,” set to be released Sept. 15, has plenty of compelling information, but it’s Trump’s knowledge of the coronavirus that made news Wednesday. Woodward interviewed Trump 18 times for the book and writes, “Trump never did seem willing to fully mobilize the federal government and continually seemed to push problems off on the states. There was no real management theory of the case or how to organize a massive enterprise to deal with one of the most complex emergencies the United States had ever faced.”
And yet Trump seemed to know the seriousness of it almost from the start.
Woodward writes that Trump was told in January by national security advisor Robert O’Brien that the virus would be the “biggest national security threat you face in your presidency.” O’Brien’s deputy, Matt Pottinger, told Trump that it could be as bad as the influenza pandemic of 1918.
On Feb. 7, he told Woodward, “This is deadly stuff.”
A little more than a month later, on March 19, Trump told Woodward, “I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.”
There’s much to discuss about the Woodward book, what’s in it and the reaction to it. So let’s start …
Did Woodward sit on valuable information?
Trump told Woodward in February that the virus was deadly and in March that he was purposefully downplaying it. Yet, we are just finding out about that now as Woodward gets set to release a book.
Was Woodward wrong for having sat on this information for six months? Many are criticizing Woodward, as you can read about here and here.
At first glance, we’re talking about a deadly virus and the president admitting to purposefully misleading the American people. So, yes, it’s completely fair to at least wonder if Woodward held on to such news because he was saving it for personal gain in the form of what’s sure to be a best-selling book.
However, Woodward made a good point during an interview with the Associated Press’ Hillel Italie: “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?”
In other words, why should Woodward have trusted what Trump was telling him in February? Why should Trump ever be trusted without a thorough fact-check? It wasn’t until May, Woodward said, that he was satisfied that what Trump told him in February was based on reliable information. And by May, the whole world was aware of how deadly the coronavirus was.
Woodward said, “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.”
And that’s really the crux of the whole thing. To somehow pin this on Woodward or to accuse him of harming anyone is unfair. As the nation watched tens of thousands of people dying each month and then watched what the president said and did, how could you not be aware that Trump was downplaying the virus? Do you really need a book to tell you that Trump has spent months misleading the American people? You’re telling me that if Woodward didn’t write a book, you would have been unaware of how bad the virus was because you only listened to Trump?
Now, if the president knew the country was in grave danger about something the American public was completely unaware of, then I would say, yes, Woodward had an obligation to share what he knew. But that’s not the case at all.
By the time Woodward was confident that what Trump said was true, the country had known, or should have known, the truth of the coronavirus. If you didn’t then that’s on you.
That’s not to say that Trump downplaying the virus — and, especially, admitting he did so on purpose — is not important. Woodward’s book does prove that Trump was willing to lie and mislead to either keep his job, to avoid responsibility or because he thought that if he kept saying it would go away, it actually would. That’s what is important, and Woodward’s book succeeds in telling us that.
To that point, check out this passage from a column by The Washington Post’s Margaret Sullivan: “But why not then write such a story later in the spring, once it was clear that the virus was extraordinarily destructive and that Trump’s early downplaying had almost certainly cost lives? Again, Woodward said he believes his highest purpose isn’t to write daily stories but to give his readers the big picture — one that may have a greater effect, especially with a consequential election looming.”
Sullivan’s take
This is how Sullivan ended her column on Woodward holding on to the quotes: “Still, the chance — even if it’s a slim chance — that those revelations could have saved lives is a powerful argument against waiting this long.”
Meantime, my Poynter colleague Al Tompkins weighed in, writing, “The most important question today is not why Bob Woodward withheld the information until now. The most important question is why did President Donald Trump keep what could have been lifesaving information from the American public? And now that we know it, will Americans trust him to level with us in the future?”
And there’s this, too ...
There’s one more thing to note about Woodward waiting to use the Trump quotes for his book. In a really smart Twitter thread, Washington Post media critic Erik Wemple wrote:
“Seeing a lot of arguments that Bob Woodward did something unethical or untoward in ‘holding’ on to his scoop about Trump’s admission that he played down the coronavirus. I disagree with the criticism. Woodward is a book author and the implicit understanding with his sources is that he’ll interview them, interview them again and again and again until he can stitch together something authoritative, in book form. That method explains how he gets officials and presidents to cooperate with him. If he were doing daily dispatches and attending all the White House briefings, he wouldn’t be getting 18 on-the-record interviews with President Trump.”
Woodward told Sullivan that there was no embargo or agreement with Trump about holding back quotes for the book. He did tell Trump he was writing a book, but he would never promise to not publish in real time. “I don’t do that,” he told Sullivan.
But Wemple is right. No way Woodward continues getting to interview Trump time and time again — and gathering more critical information that the American people need to know — if he wrote a story every time he talked to Trump.
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