Woodward a man feared by wayward presidents

Almost half a century after the Watergate scandal, journalist Bob Woodward is still a force, on front pages around the world and shaking the presidents of the United States .

His reporting as a Washington Post reporter on Watergate brought down Richard Nixon in the 1970s. Now, the 77-year-old Woodward’s latest book, Rage , shakes Donald Trump less than two months before the presidential election. November 3.

In an official interview with Woodward, which was used in the book, Trump admits that he downplayed the threat of the new coronavirus at the beginning of the pandemic, which has so far claimed the lives of some 191,000 people in that country.

“I always wanted to downplay it, ” Trump said in a conversation with Woodward. “I still like to downplay it, because I don’t want to create panic,” he added.

The Republican also told the journalist that from the beginning he understood that the virus was “something deadly” and much more dangerous than the common flu. But, at the same time, it addressed its citizens by ensuring that Covid-19 would simply “disappear.”

Trump’s Democratic adversary, Joe Biden , attacked the president’s position on the health crisis, calling it a “betrayal of life or death to the American people.” “He knowingly and willingly lied about the threat [the virus] posed to the country for months,” said Biden, who is leading the polls in the last leg of the race for the White House.

Woodward, in an interview with the program Minutes 60 , the chain CBS, described as a “tragedy” that the president did not inform the American people from the beginning what it was deadly virus.

“The president of the United States has a duty to warn,” he said.

“The public will understand, but if they have the feeling that they are not receiving the truth, then they are going down the path of deception and cover-up,” he added.

Reactions
With an avalanche of messages and statements to Fox News , Trump yesterday tried to defuse the controversy.

Following the publication of excerpts from Rage , which will go on sale on Tuesday, the US president attacked its author: “Bob Woodward had my statements for several months,” he tweeted. “ If you thought they were so bad or dangerous, why didn’t you immediately report it in an effort to save lives? Didn’t he have an obligation to do so? NO, because I knew they were good and adequate answers ”.

Trump gave Woodward 18 interviews between December 2019 and July 2020, by phone or face-to-face.