Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, now we learn in Bob Woodward’s “RAGE” that Trump knew how deadly COVID was on day one yet lied to us about it leading to the tragic loss of over 190,000 lives to date.
In a series of interviews that he knew were being tape recorded, Trump said : “it’s deadly stuff…5 times more deadly than the flu.” Yet publicly he was downplaying it, happy talking over all the alarms his homeland security and health advisors were sounding. We still don’t have a national strategy to stop the spread of the virus.
Joe Biden responded : “Trump failed to do his job on purpose. He has committed a life and death betrayal of the American people. He said he didn’t want to tell the truth and create a panic. So he did nothing and created a disaster.”
Trump should immediately resign for dereliction of duty. He is a clear and present danger to our nation and is unfit to serve.
doubleman says
A followup on this. Absolutely do not buy Woodward’s book. Despicable move to keep those tapes secret for 7 months. Awful.
SomervilleTom says
While I tend to agree with you, I’m not sure I see how immediate publication of the tapes would have changed anything. Unlike Mr. Bolton, who I think should be prosecuted for obstruction because of his refusal to provide his evidence to a lawful subpoena of Congress, I just don’t see how anything would have changed if these tapes had been made public.
Since there was no viable path towards removing Mr. Trump when the tapes were made, then I think Mr. Woodward can make a reasonable case that their release now — after Labor Day in an election year — is a better use of this material.
Some of us argued against the failed strategy of a quick and limited impeachment.
Once impeached and acquitted in February, and with a corrupt Attorney General making the entire DoJ another instrument available to Mr. Trump and the Trumpists, I don’t see how any honest official has had any leverage to do anything since.
Our political system has failed. We have a president who is either an asset of a hostile nation, criminally incompetent, or both. The fact that Mr. Trump and his mob still control the American government is irrefutable evidence that our system of “checks and balances” has failed.
jconway says
I had this argument with friends and agree with Tom. At the end of the day Woodward releasing the tapes now will have a longer lasting impact that folks will remember when they vote. Leaking them when they happened would have seen them swallowed up by the impeachment news cycle and dismissed as a nothing burger at the time since the virus had not taken that many American lives yet.
I agree with the take there Woodward is a bit of a hack for this and other reasons. I disagree with the “Woodward allowed thousands to die to sell his book” takes km seeing around.
terrymcginty says
Oh, okay. So now we’ll blais a journalist trying to expose this deadly mendacity?
did it ever occur to you that there would be no book and that people might not of paid any attention whatsoever to a journalist randomly claiming that the night before the president had said something different to him?
Did it ever occur to you that maybe many of the 18 conversations that brought out perhaps equally or more important information might never have occurred and we might therefore never know about these things?
terrymcginty says
When people are engaged in such navel gazing that they fail to see any context whatsoever, civilization is near its end.
terrymcginty says
So while we’re at it, I suppose Woodward and Bernstein also should’ve revealed everything that they were learning as they were putting together the White House reporting in Watergate.
terrymcginty says
Why the hell can’t we edit our comments?
SomervilleTom says
The edit window for editing a comment only stays open for a little while. I get caught by it as well from time to time.
doubleman says
They did! They published as they corroborated stories in the much more complex Watergate story. If they had an interview they conducted with Nixon admitting to stuff, we wouldn’t be reading about it in the Washington Post . . . 7 months later.
SomervilleTom says
I was there. I lived in the DC area, Washington Post was a local paper for my family. There was a LOT that Mr. Woodward and Mr. Bernstein did not publish as it happened. They were also working reporters on a daily beat in that time.
The entire west coast is on fire. Our national security agencies are being prevented from disclosing significant information about Russian attacks to congress.
We have more important things to be paying attention to.
doubleman says
When journalism is based on access, fame, and selling books (note, not even publishing in a newspaper or magazine for some reasonably contemporaneous dissemination), civilization is near its end.
bob-gardner says
It depends on which you think is more important, dealing with the pandemic or removing Trump.
SomervilleTom says
Sadly, it appears to me that these two are inseparable.
Donald Trump and his minions are actively sabotaging every effort to deal with the pandemic. The resulting chaos, anger, fear, suffering, and other consequences of the pandemic make it more difficult to remove this administration from power.
We are learning how much power a corrupt administration actually has, and how little actual effect our “checks and balances” have on that power.
I don’t see how we deal with the pandemic while the current administration is in power. I fear for what this administration will do to all of us between now and whenever it is removed from power.
bob-gardner says
Nope, the question is whether Woodward should have revealed what Trump told him and warned the country about the true nature of the pandemic. Arguably, that could have save lives, lots of lives,
although that’s not a sure thing, and of course, it looks a lot easier in hindsight.
I don’t think it’s an easy question to answer. But it’s not navel gazing in ask it. A more timely, honest response could have saved anywhere from 30,000 to 50,000 lives. Keeping that information under wraps for 6 months, arguably will help defeat Trump. Was the trade off worth it?
I know some people would rather invent funny names than deal with real life, but Woodward’s behavior is worth thinking about.
SomervilleTom says
Understood.
If Bob Woodward had been the only voice saying this, and if the administration’s response to the pandemic had been the only example of outrageous behavior, then I would join you being more critical of Mr. Woodward’s decision.
I don’t see a scenario where publishing this audio in March would have changed anything.
Suppose the audio had been published then. What do you imagine would have been different? What government officials would have made different decisions?
The Donald Trump administration made an explicit and intentional decision to lie about the COVID threat while intentionally sabotaging America’s ability to respond to that threat.
What would a week or two of headlines in March have changed?
bob-gardner says
I’m not criticizing Woodward. I thought I made it clear that I don’t know the answer to the question. My only point is that it is a serious question. You very well may be right that there was nothing that anyone could do to save lives in this pandemic as long as Trump was in charge, but I’m not convinced yet.
SomervilleTom says
Heh. Well, doubleman sounded convinced when he wrote the comment that we’re discussing:
I agree with you that it’s a serious question, one that I suspect graduate students will write numerous theses about for the next few decades.
Mr. Woodward didn’t have the luxury of deferring his decision. I think doubleman’s attack is much harsher than the situation dictates.
One way to look at this is that there is now no question about how serious the pandemic is and about how culpable the Donald Trump administration is for making the pandemic far worse than it needed to be. So the first part of the “no harm, no foul” bromide is demolished.
That says to me that if we STILL ignore the tapes and leave these criminals in power, then we should focus our attention on our broken political system rather than attack the timing of the journalists who tell us about it (as doubleman does in his comment).
bob-gardner says
I appreciate your saying that it’s a serious question even if you still seem a little cavalier. This is anything but a question for future graduate students. Someone else could vey well be in the same situation before the election.. If there is information out there that could save lives but might as a side effect be useful to Trump, is it worth the lives lost to suppress it? Even if it is uncertain how many lives, if any are saved?
Just as it is easy to second guess Woodward, it is also easy to rationalize away his problem. It might be that you are correct that releasing the tapes at the beginning of the pandemic would have ended up not saving lives, but your calculations could be wrong. Are you really that comfortable, considering the scale of the epidemic, staking the lives of so many people on that calculation?
SomervilleTom says
Yes.
I think you overstate the influence that releasing the tapes would have had then. It isn’t yet clear that their publication will be more than a few days of breathless media outbursts today.
Nobody has described any mechanism by which an early release of these tapes would have had changed anything.
How would any lives have been saved?
doubleman says
We could have stopped talking mainly about washing your hands and not touching your face. Remember that? Those were the recommendations for so long.
If there was more early knowledge of the airborne nature of it, we could have moved a lot faster to recommending/requiring masks.
SomervilleTom says
Under whose direction would this movement had occurred?
We knew that this was airborne. It was widely reported
Mr. Woodward’s claims would have been dismissed then by the same people who are dismissing them now.
Mr. Woodward is not to blame for the disastrously incompetent handling of this pandemic.
bob-gardner says
Presumably, you are still comfortable with other journalists doing the same thing, ie releasing or suppressing information based on political, or commercial considerations, and rationalizing away the potential effects on public health.
I hope at least that Woodward was motivated by actual, real world political considerations and not the deranged conspiracy theories that I’ve seen in other places.
SomervilleTom says
I am comfortable with any author choosing what to publish and when. I am also comfortable with any author basing those decisions on whatever criteria he or she deems relevant.
That’s what “freedom of the press” means.
You haven’t answered my question: How would a March or April publication of these recordings have changed anything?
What government officials or journalistic outlets would have behaved differently?
How would those changes have saved lives?
doubleman says
Being judged by the public for publishing something in a certain fashion or at a certain time literally has nothing to do with “freedom of the press.”
That thinking is like what has become of “freedom of speech” and people (largely on the right-wing) thinking that facing a public backlash for saying racist things is a violation of free speech. It ain’t.
bob-gardner says
I think it is likely that some people, hearing this information in the president’s voice, might have taken precautions, that they otherwise wouldn’t have taken, and perhaps been spared an agonizing death. People at least should have been given the chance.
I think for these human beings, the difference would be between living and dying. Maybe the difference would not have seemed that great to someone looking at the situation statistically. But, as much as I’ve been accused of being a cynic, I can’t bring myself to be that cynical. It takes a great sense of entitlement and privilege to assume that nothing would have changed things.
doubleman says
It likely wouldn’t have changed to the reaction to the pandemic.
It was still unethical.
We shouldn’t buy his book.
I think he is a bad guy (for a variety of reasons), and consistently putting access, fame, and money over journalism.
Should he prosecuted for tens of thousands of deaths? No.
Is he a bad guy whose book you should absolutely not buy? Yes.
SomervilleTom says
Interesting. So you agree that early publication would have made no difference in the reaction to the pandemic. Yet you claim Mr. Woodward’s choice was still “unethical”.
It seems clear enough to me that you’re expressing your personal dislike of Mr. Woodward, disconnected from any of the relevant facts.
Nobody is encouraging you to buy or read his book.
doubleman says
Absolutely unethical to withhold important contemporaneous news (without any need for corroboration or without threat of criminal prosecution) on a national emergency in order to sell books later.
I suspect there would have been no change in the pandemic response, but I nor you know for sure. One reason I suspect that is because our press, nearly across the board, is so awful today and do not understand that journalism is about holding power to account.
I kicked off this thread talking about how it was a gross move and no one should buy his books. You’ve twisted that into thinking I said he should be held responsible for tens of thousands of deaths.
SomervilleTom says
Slow down there, partner.
If you’ll reread the thread, I think you’ll see that any assertion about “tens of thousands of deaths” did not come from me.
I don’t share your view about ethical obligations or limits of journalists. I doubt that I’ll buy this book because I don’t think it has anything new — I don’t need Bob Woodward to tell me that Donald Trump is a dangerous and evil man who belongs in jail.
SomervilleTom says
In my view, the question is whether publishing the recording just after it was made would make “a more timely, honest response” more or less likely.
I think that publishing this would have hurt rather than helped. In March, only the experts knew how dangerous this virus is. At that time, I think the administration would have attacked Mr. Woodward, attacked the media outlets that published it, accused all involved of hysteria-mongering, and so on.
A timely, honest response that saved tens of thousands of lives — concentrated in urban areas among a demographic that Donald Trump has spent a lifetime hating — is antithetical to everything that motivates Donald Trump.
The information that Donald Trump was lying about the threat posed by COVID was already widely reported in the spring. I think these tapes would have no measurable constructive difference at all.
Christopher says
So a President is in hot water because of tapes connected to reporting by Bob Woodward. There’s no precedent – oh, wait!
SomervilleTom says
Except that this president isn’t in hot water.
In 1972, a sitting president was brought down for misdeeds that are insignificant in comparison to what we already know that Donald Trump has done. In 1972, there were some Republicans — in both the House and the Senate — who were willing to put the rule of law and the well-being of the nation above their individual and immediate political gain. There are no such Republicans today, with the possible exception of Mitt Romney. None in the House.
This president is not in hot water. This president faces no threat as a result of this reporting.
This administration has dismantled the DoJ. It has paralyzed the USPS. It has hobbled the State Department. It has turned the DHS and NSA into political tools. His appointee to head the USPS for years has conducted a criminal scheme reminiscent of Spiro Agnew’s racket. He arranged for his employees to give contributions where he directed, then he arranged for them to receive “bonus” payments that matched their “contributions”. Spiro Agnew was forced to resign because federal agents with DoJ caught him, untangled the scheme, and brought criminal charges. NOBODY at William Barr’s DoJ will do anything like that to any “friend of Donald”.
A whistleblower from the DHS reveals what everyone already knew — the President has been suppressing intelligence about current and ongoing Russian attacks on the 2020 election.
Our political system has failed. The president is not in danger of losing power. His gang of thugs will continue to do all in their power to keep him in office.
I fear that this election is over before it began. The question now — that nobody is yet willing to discuss — is what happens after election day. In particular, what happens on January 21, 2021.
jconway says
This piece from the Prospect really
lays bare the uncharted waters we are in. While I reject both the naive optimism of Christopher and the resigned pessimism of Tom on Trumps conduct between Election Day and Jan 20th, I also think the latter scenario is far more likely than the former.
We have to be sober minded about his norm breaking continuing after Nov. 3. He will go down kicking and screaming and we have to be prepared to take to the streets and refuse to work until he’s out of office. My in laws had to do this for Marcos and their clerical colleagues back in Manila may have to do the same again for Duterte. It’s sad America could come to this.
https://prospect.org/politics/winter-of-our-discontent-trump-2020-election/
Christopher says
I want a shoe count from Melania’s closet before I accept comparisons to Marcos:)
Christopher says
Certainly seems to me like yesterday was a bad day politically for Trump, even when you consider how many bad political days he has had.
SomervilleTom says
Having a bad day politically doesn’t mean that Mr. Trump is in any sort of “hot water”.
Mr. Trump has committed a long and growing list of crimes, he has repeatedly betrayed our national interest to hostile nations, he has been flagrantly and blatantly dishonest, corrupt, racist, sexist, and xenophobic — and he still enjoys support from more than a handful of voters.
Our political system is broken. There is no visible connection between behavior and consequences. So far as I can tell, having a bad politically means that some talking heads will cluck-cluck and tell us — again — about these “unprecedented” events.
They’ll then go to a commercial break where we’ll see a happy and diverse group of old people riding motorcycles and climbing mountains in order to sell us some prescription drug for arthritis.
The only time Mr. Trump will be in hot water is when he is looking at the IMMEDIATE — as in the next few hours — removal from power.
When CNN, MSNBC, and Fox suspend their advertising segments in order to stay on minute-to-minute breaking news about an imminent removal of Mr. Trump and his cronies — THEN and only then will Mr. Trump be in “hot water”.
Until then, it’s just business as usual for Mr. Trump and for corporate America.
fredrichlariccia says
How to tell your a very stable genius. You give 18 recorded interviews to Bob Woodward, the man who helped bring down Nixon. anon
Christopher says
He has no awareness. This is the guy who confessed to Lester Holt on national television that he fired James Comey on account of the Russia investigation.
Christopher says
You don’t really expect Trump to be forcibly removed from office by any method other than the November election at this point, do you?
SomervilleTom says
I’m not sure you realize the assumptions you make in this comment. The November election doesn’t remove anybody from office. Even in normal times, nothing changes until the following January. These are not normal times.
I do not believe Mr. Trump will relinquish power unless he sees that he has no other choice.
I think that if Mr. Trump loses the November election, which he almost certainly will, he and the entire GOP will immediately launch a blistering barrage of attacks against the “fake news” media, Democrats, “Liberals”, “illegals”, and who knows who else. I expect that there will already be legal challenges active in multiple states claiming that their election results are invalid.
I think the Donald Trump administration and pretty much the entire GOP will say that the election results are invalid, there was “massive fraud”, and similar rubbish.
I think that the Donald Trump administration will continue to use all of the immense power of the federal government to preserve Donald Trump’s grip on power.
That’s why I’d like to see, specifically, how he is removed in the face of that. I want to know who does it — what people, from what agency, under whose orders, and claiming what jurisdiction.
Christopher says
My point is the election is the only realistic way of accomplishing that and of course I understand how a lame duck period works. There will be neither another impeachment, nor invoking the 25th, nor a coup in the meantime. We agree in the prediction that he is likely to lose. We agree that he will yell and scream about it, but ultimately the nuclear codes and other privileges WILL be transferred to Biden at noon on 1/20 if he has won the election. The worst I can see happening is a repeat of 1876, but that was due to a very close vote that came down to FL and I think there will be room to spare this time. I suppose Trump can be arrested and removed from the WH by force, but I still think it’s way more likely he skips town. Let’s hope it’s not to a country we don’t have an extradition treaty with. Trump, like most bullies, actually has a solid record of backing down when push really comes to shove. YOU seem to be one assuming that every one of his legal and political tricks will be successful, but I am feeling like a broken record telling you so many things have to fall his way for that to be even close to a concern.
fredrichlariccia says
The Real Scandal Woodward’s Book Revealed is This : Helen Kennedy
The press is framing this as “Trump knew how bad this was and didn’t warn the country” but really the scandal is “Trump knew how bad this was and didn’t launch a massive federal prevention effort.”