Rage

by Bob Woodward

During the Top Secret President’s Daily Brief the afternoon of Tuesday, January 28, 2020, discussion in the Oval Office turned to a mysterious pneumonia-like virus outbreak in China.

“This will be the biggest national security threat you face in your presidency,” Robert O’Brien, the national security adviser, told Trump, expressing a jarring, contrarian view as deliberately and as strongly as possible.

“Don’t think SARS 2003,” the expert replied. “Think influenza pandemic 1918.”

He had just learned that morning it was being spread by people who didn’t show any symptoms; this is called asymptomatic spread. His best, most authoritative source said 50 percent were infected but showed no symptoms. This meant a once-in-a-lifetime health emergency, a virus out of control with a vast amount of the spread not immediately detectable.

Cut off travel from China to the United States, Pottinger said.

Three days later, on January 31, the president did impose restrictions on travelers from China,

“How concerned are you” about coronavirus? Fox’s

“We pretty much shut it down coming in from China,” Trump said.

“I wanted to always play it down,” Trump told me. “I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.”

“And I think he’s going to have it in good shape,” Trump said, “but you know, it’s a very tricky situation.” What made it “tricky”? “It goes through air,” Trump said. “That’s always tougher than the touch. You don’t have to touch things. Right? But the air, you just

It’s also more deadly than even your strenuous flus.”

In our call, Trump had surprising detail about the virus. Trump continued, “Pretty amazing. This is more deadly” than the flu, maybe five times more so.

While discussing Fear on television, I was asked for my bottom-line summary of Trump’s leadership. “Let’s hope to God we don’t have a crisis,” I said.

By February 7, we

were on our sixth of what would be 17 interviews.

“There’s dynamite behind every door” seemed the most self-aware statement about the jeopardy, pressures and responsibilities of the presidency I had heard Trump make in public or private.

Yet the unexpected headline from the call was also his detailed knowledge of the virus and his description of it as so deadly so early in February, more than a month before it began to engulf him,

Who was responsible for the failure to warn the American public of the coming pandemic? Where was the breakdown? What leadership decisions did Trump make or fail to make in the crucial early weeks? It would take me months to get answers to those questions.

Russia

You write that in a memo to Jeff, who will send it to me with a recommendation, he said. “And then I’ll fire Comey.”

The White House put out a statement saying the Comey firing was Rosenstein’s idea.

Trump had “the authority to do this,” Rosenstein said, “but you’ve got to tell the truth about the reasoning.” McGahn said he agreed.

Trump called Rosenstein. The president had been watching Fox News and the coverage had been great. Rosenstein ought to have a press conference. No, Rosenstein said, he did not think that was a good idea. If asked, he would have to truthfully say the Comey firing was not his idea.

“I believe you,” Graham replied. “Because you can’t work with your own government. Why should you be working with the Russian government?”

The greatest threat to the national security apparatus, Coats believed, was that Trump wanted to ignore any kind of process that went through experts—people steeped in certain issues or certain parts of the world, often for their whole careers.

The central flaw in the Mueller investigation was that the prosecutors never found an inside witness who could tell a story of corrupt, illegal conduct.

Coats realized nobody in the Senate needed to be told what was happening. They knew. The senators just desperately wanted to get past the November 3 election.

President Trump told me he deserved exclusive credit for the travel restrictions from China. “I had 21 people in my office, in the Oval Office, and of the 21 there was one person that said we have to close it down. That was me.

President Trump said publicly three times—once at the White House, once on TV and once at a New Hampshire rally—that the virus would go away on its own. “When it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away,” he said at the packed rally. “I think it’s going to work out good. We only have 11 cases and they’re all getting better.”

A couple of additional Covid cases in New York were diagnosed in people who had not come into the United States from China. They came from Italy. The light bulb went off and remained glowing.

Birx reported that 35 states had Covid-19 cases now and 30 of those had been traced to travelers that had come from Europe,

Asked about his frequent assertion that the situation was under control, Trump acknowledged, “The virus, no, that’s not under control for anyplace in the world.” He added, “I was talking about what we’re doing is under control, but I’m not talking about the virus.”

Graham said he told the president, “You need a plan. You need to explain to the country, we’re not helpless against the virus. Here’s the game plan to beat the virus.

He said the Mueller investigation had been “an attempted takedown of the president of the United States.” “I say this to you directly,” I said. “What happened in the past, you have to—it’s getting in the way, I think, of you doing” your job on the virus.

He was referring to his restrictions on foreigners flying into the United States from China. “I turned out to be right. Almost everybody was against me. Took a lot of heat.” As this book has shown earlier the five key national security and health

officials, including Fauci, supported the restrictions.

“So if it’s a bad book—no, think of it. If it’s a bad book, you’re right in front of my election. That’s a beauty. That’s terrible.”

Trump continued, “I think what could’ve happened, Bob, is it got away from them and he didn’t want to contain it from the rest of the world because it would’ve put him at a big disadvantage.

Trump said, “Obama gave us 142 judges when I came here. They’re like golden nuggets.” Republicans had controlled the Senate for the last two years of the Obama presidency and Majority Leader McConnell blocked most appointments.

But whatever happened the Chinese have repurposed it into a bioweapon. And they’re using it, they’re attempting to take advantage of Covid to gain a geopolitical advantage over the United States and the free world,

For CDC chief Redfield the Chinese failure to close down international flights was disastrous. He told colleagues the United States had silently filled with Covid-19 infections “from Italy, Spain, Germany, France, Great Britain, Belgium.” All this late-winter travel brought clusters of Covid to the United States. “Also unknown to us that probably half of those clusters weren’t even symptomatic, so you couldn’t find them” with airport screening.

“The virus could undercut everything I just talked about,” Graham said. “Why’d you tell me that?” Trump said. “It’s just true.”

McEnany limited Fauci’s television appearances. Under the system, all the networks and cable news outlets had to submit a request for a Fauci interview in writing to the Department of Health and Human Services, who then in turn would pass it to the White House for approval.

And do you have any sense that that privilege has isolated and put you in a cave, to a certain extent, as it put me—and I think lots of white, privileged people—in a cave? And that we have to work our way out of it to understand the anger and the pain, particularly, Black people feel in this country?” “No,” Trump said. “You really drank the Kool-Aid, didn’t you? Just listen to you,” he said, his voice mocking and incredulous. “Wow. No, I don’t feel that at all.” “You don’t?” “I’ve done more for the Black community

But now, I’ve come to the conclusion that the “dynamite behind the door” was in plain sight. It was Trump himself. The oversized personality. The failure to organize. The lack of discipline. The lack of trust in others he had picked, in experts.

By undermining so many others not only had he shaken confidence in them but he had shaken confidence in himself. This was particularly apparent when the country most needed to feel the government knew what it was doing in an unprecedented health crisis.

The deep-seated hatreds of American politics flourished in the Trump years. He stoked them, and did not make concerted efforts to bring the country together.

the interviews show he vacillated, prevaricated and at times dodged his role as leader of the country despite his “I alone can fix it” rhetoric.

In a time of crisis, the operational is much more important than the political or the personal. For tens of millions the optimistic American story has turned to a nightmare.

When his performance as president is taken in its entirety, I can only reach one conclusion: Trump is the wrong man for the job.