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Bob Woodward speaks at the Newseum in Washington, DC, in 2012, during an event marking the 40th anniversary of Watergate. Woodward's new book describes the chaos within the Trump administration.
Jim Watson / AFP / Getty Images
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Jim Watson / AFP / Getty Images
Bob Woodward speaks at the Newseum in Washington, DC, in 2012, during an event marking the 40th anniversary of Watergate. Woodward's new book describes the chaos within the Trump administration.
Jim Watson / AFP / Getty Images
Bob Woodward, author of a new explosive representation of President Trump's White House, told the NPR that government officials denied his account by "political necessity."
In his book Fear, what comes out on Tuesday, Woodward describes Trump behaving erratically and impulsively, even on important issues of national security, and insulting some of his senior officials.
President Trump has repeatedly denounced Woodward's book, calling the veteran idiot journalist and his work "fictional".
Woodward always said that he was standing behind his reports on Trump's actions.
"He was there and said these things and did these things," says Woodward Morning edition moderator Rachel Martin.
The book also describes staff members and advisers as condemning the president behind his back and actively working to thwart some of his actions, even going so far as to hide documents from Trump.
Several leading figures in the book have denied the quotes Woodward attributes to them. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis denies having said that Trump acted as a fifth or sixth year student while he was discussing North Korea, and Chief of Staff John Kelly denied qualifying Trump "d & # 39; idiot".
Woodward stands to his reports, telling NPR that he attributes the denials to a "political necessity".
"You're launching Washington's big denial machine," he says. "I have seen this over the years, returning to the Nixon affair." (Woodward's source for the Watergate scandal, Mark Felt, has denied for years that it was actually "deep throat".)
"People are going to deny things many times," said Woodward. "I understand that people have to protect their positions, but I have done hundreds of hours of interviews with people … these things happened."
Woodward's book is based on in-depth interviews, which he defines as interviews where "all information could be used but I would not say who provided it".
"People are not anonymous to me," he says.
Once someone had described an episode to him, Woodward would say, "I would go to other people's houses and say, '' Did that happen? '' Who else was there? "
"You can, almost microscopically, establish what happened – and that's what I did in this book."
Woodward also addresses the anonymous editorial published in The New York Times shortly after the first excerpts of his book. In the article, an unnamed senior government official said that White House people "actively opposed Mr. Trump's more mistaken impulses."
"I do not know who it is," says Woodward. "It is essential: who is this person and why is he hiding in this way?
"If this person had come to see me while I was working on this book or if it was a person I had interviewed, I would say," I need details. "The building blocks of the journalism, truth, are specific incidents. "
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