Bob Woodward released another recording from his interviews with President Trump in which the commander in chief recalled a sneeze that cleared the Oval Office during the pandemic.
The clip was aired Monday evening by Stephen Colbert, the host of CBS’s The Late Show, with Woodward appearing virtually as a guest. He called the tape, which was recorded during an April 13 phone call at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, “quite revealing.”
“Bob, it’s so easily transmissible, you wouldn’t even believe it,” Trump said about COVID-19.
“I mean, you could be in the room — I was in the White House a couple of days ago, meeting with 10 people in the Oval Office and a guy sneezed — innocently, not a horrible — you know, just a sneeze,” the president recounted. “The entire room bailed out, OK? Including me, by the way.”
Woodward smiled upon hearing the tape being played, and Colbert said he knew Trump was “making light there at the end,” adding that at the heart of the recording is “something extraordinarily shocking.”
“Yes,” Woodward replied to the TV host.
Woodward went on to postulate about what would have happened if a guest in the front row at Trump’s Sunday rally in Nevada, the first indoor rally for the campaign in months, would have sneezed.
“I wonder if someone sneezed in the front row that Trump would bail out again and get out of the way,” the veteran journalist said.
TONIGHT! In a Late Show EXCLUSIVE, journalist @realBobWoodward shares a new recording of his interviews with Trump that reveal even more of the President’s failures to protect the American people from the Coronavirus. #LSSC pic.twitter.com/Aib8E6ngUO
— A Late Show (@colbertlateshow) September 14, 2020
Trump addressed the safety of the rally during a weekend interview in which he brushed off concerns for his own well-being.
“I’m on a stage that’s very far away, and so, I’m not at all concerned,” he said Sunday.
Woodward’s new book, Rage, is sourced from 18 on-the-record interviews with Trump as well as “deep background” conversations with officials. Woodward’s book, set to be released on Tuesday, generated controversy for excerpts that show Trump early on worked to downplay the coronavirus threat while privately acknowledging its deadliness. Trump has called the book a “fake.”
