"People need to wake up" to what is happening under threat: NPR

Veteran reporter Bob Woodward has written about every American president since Richard Nixon – nine in total. But during all his years spent in politics, he has never met a president like President Trump.

The last work of Woodward, Fear: Trump at the White House, paints a portrait of Trump as uninformed and mercurial. The book describes the times when staff members came together to deliberately block what they believe to be the most dangerous impulses of the president – sometimes by surreptitiously removing documents from the president's office.

"There have been draft proposals to exit the Paris climate agreement that have been removed from the president's office," Woodward said. "[There were] draft declarations on the withdrawal of the North American Free Trade Agreement – which would have been a disaster – and [former economic adviser Gary] Cohn just removed it from the office. "

Woodward says that he was shocked by the length at which the staff went around Trump: "I have never heard in any way that staff circulate around a president of this way and take orders to stop the action. "

Highlights of the interview

Why did Trump want to withdraw troops from the Korean peninsula?

[Trump] is obsessed with money. At a meeting of the National Security Council at the beginning of the year, January 19, the whole issue was raised about money and the President said, "What do we do we get by maintaining a massive military presence in North Korean Peninsula? What about the protection of Taiwan, for example? "

And that's when [Gen.] Mattis finally says, "We are doing this to prevent World War III." Then the president says, "We are losing a lot of money and trade with South Korea and China and other countries. I think we could be so rich if we were not stupid.

Secretary of Defense James Mattis and the White House Chief of Staff, John Kelly, publicly deny having said things they cited in Woodward's book.

Look, Mattis has to survive. He is in a difficult position. But, as I said, nothing is ignored, and in the early days, after parts of the book came out last week, a key person from the office called me and said, "All the world knows you wrote it's true, that's 1,000 percent correct. "Because that's someone who knows that I've worked hard there- on it and that I tried to dig and search the reality.

Look, they also have first amendment rights. And they are in position and … they should say what they mean. I have no objection to that, even if it is a kind of politically calculated survival denial. …

I am convinced that people must wake up and not pretend that it is only politics or that it is partisan. What's going on in the Trump administration – and I said that to the president when I called last month – I said, "We're at a turning point in history ".

Why did he interview people for his book on "a deep background" as opposed to a recording or not?

I knew that people in these sensitive positions would not be speaking on the record. … You let people talk and you get things that are not true. If you use a deep background, you will use [the information] but not to say where it comes from. You are then in this position to check with others and get a level of truth that is not available on the record, unfortunately. …

There is a lot of awareness and courage in this – people are talking. And yes, they protect themselves but, my God, who does not try to protect themselves? But they were ready to help me in this process. And I think that illuminates what is happening, and not in an abstract way.

On how the Investigation in Russia has affected President Trump

The next day [special counsel Robert] Mueller was appointed, so it would be May 18 of last year, the president was in the oval office and he would normally sit in the resolution office. But he got up and ran to the television in the dining room, watching all the news, watching them so that he could watch and look next to him. …

Rob Porter, the secretary of staff, said that it was almost Nixonian. He entered the paranoid area – Nixon, in his last days, pounding the rug, talking to the pictures on the wall. And Trump would not have come from that moment and announced [to anyone listening] that he was the president of the United States: he could dismiss anyone. He could do anything. And it was very disconcerting for people who witnessed this.

He realized then – he was right – that once you have a special council with this unlimited authority, essentially an unlimited time, going after you, they will look under all the stones. And that's exactly what Mueller did and charged Paul Manafort, indicted at all levels, or obtained guilty pleas, and so on. This is what the FBI calls the "full field". … People make fun of themselves if they think that it has not had a dramatic emotional impact on the president.

Sam Briger and Mooj Zadie produced and edited the audio of this interview. Bridget Bentz and Seth Kelley have adapted it for the Web.