Veteran journalist Bob Woodward said historians will reflect on President Trump’s administration and wonder “what the F happened” to the country.
The Watergate sleuth, who has been on a media blitz discussing his new book Rage that contains portions of 18 interviews with the president, criticized the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic during a Tuesday interview with CNN President Jeff Zucker as part of the network’s CITIZEN conference.
Zucker asked Woodward “how worried” people should be “about our democracy.”
“Well, we should be worried,” Woodward replied. “I mean in the sense that democracy is held, they’re not going around locking up reporters like they’re breaking into our homes, but it’s the leadership failure.” He added, “The historians, I know, are going to be writing about this for decades, and they’re going to say, what the F happened to America in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020?”
Woodward’s book revealed new information about North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s letters to Trump, former Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats fearing that Russian President Vladimir Putin had dirt on Trump, and Trump talking about how he was “playing [the coronavirus] down because I don’t want to create a panic.”
In response to the president giving himself an “A+” grade for his handling of the pandemic, Woodward told Zucker, “I’m quite frankly embarrassed for him that he would say that, because all Americans know that 200,000 were killed,” and added, “It’s almost like denying the nose on your face.”
The president has repeatedly bashed Woodward over the book, including calling it a “fake.”
