BONUS: Extended Conversation with Bob Woodward on Trump's Epstein 'mess'

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0:33If you found out we weren't alone, if someone showed you, proved it to you, would that frighten you? Well, now the truth belongs to 7 billion people in an original event film directed by Steven Spielberg from a screenplay by David Koepp starring Emily Blunt, Josh O 'Connor, Colin Firth, Eve Hewson, and Coleman Domingo. Find Disclosure Day on major digital platforms now with no subscription required, also in theaters. We're in an era where we hear a lot about facts, what's true, who to believe, what is real journalism. And we turn now to an actual icon of traditional factual journalism. The Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Bob Woodward is the author of over 20 bestselling books spanning 10 presidencies.

1:20and he usually gets to his sources, talking to presidents, the people around them, including President Trump, countless times. Of course, his reporting with Carl Bernstein helped uncover the Watergate scandal that ultimately led President Nixon to resign. His most recent book, War, follows the literal and political wars facing the U.S. over the last four years. It's out now, and he is, of course, at work on another book, which we'll hear about. Joining us now, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, Washington Post journalist, author Bob Woodward. Thanks for being here. Thank you. Great to have you. We have so much to get to.

1:52I want to start with investigative reporting and new evidence. We have this rather salacious birthday book from Jeffrey Epstein. This is something that President Trump denied submitting a card to, but now from the Epstein estate, which is quite a source, it has been released under subpoena to the Congress and now to the public. What is the import, in your view, of getting the hard evidence like this? What does it tell us? There's nothing better than a first-hand source or a document or contemporaneous notes, something that has an automatic validity with readers and viewers. And so this is compelling and is a mess for Trump.

2:41And what I know about it is not a whole lot, But it sure looks like a lot of young women were abused in a way that is so appalling, so awful, so leveraging the seniority and the masculine identity, which Epstein was a practitioner of, I guess. I mean, he's now dead for six years, so he can't be interviewed. But this, my heart, quite frankly, goes out to the women who were abused in this way in such a massive, ugly way. Really ugly way. And what the birthday book, which is new, shows was a high degree of awareness by multiple people, including Donald Trump, what has been called the body or lecherous references, the drawing.

3:51legally, and we have it here, it doesn't mean Donald Trump committed crimes with Epstein, but as evidence, it means he shows an awareness of some of what Epstein was doing, as do other entries. Not just an awareness, a fascination with it, and a kind of participation in some of it. Now, No, it's not yet conclusive, but if you're looking at this as a reporter, you say, wow, Trump is, as they say in poker, all in on many of these phases that are now known and documented. And you've done this type of reporting with so many different politicians, going at people in both parties. You were also sued by Trump at one point.

4:42he sued the Wall Street Journal saying there was no card. Now, as opposed to last week, we have the card from the Epstein estate. What should that tell us about how to assess these types of denials and even lawsuits from him and politicians who play this game? Well, in the case of the lawsuit against me, the judges dismissed it and given Trump an opportunity, as he should, or as lawyers to come back and raise new questions. And that's what happens. But that's been dismissed. And it's about the publication of Trump's voice. In interviews I did that Trump did voluntarily, acknowledged it was being recorded, acknowledged it was on the record.

5:37So it's very much a clear case, and I think the judge understands this. But again, you never know what's going to happen in a court case. But with Trump suing The Wall Street Journal over something that's now been highly corroborated, how do we take that lawsuit? It's all for show? Well, there's a lot. I mean, Trump definitely thinks that if you sue somebody, and it's not just his supporters, But I think there's, ah, well, somebody's suing, there's at least a question. And it is a way to gain the appearance or the reality of leverage. And then we see some lawsuits. I mean, you know this as a lawyer, that in lawsuits, sometimes it's good at answering questions, And sometimes it's terrible because it gets settled or it goes off on some side issue and so forth.

6:40So this will play out. The other reporting this week from The New York Times is deep investigative work, interviews, documents, some material that had been under seal to show that this big bank, J.P. Morgan, really did look the other way. while these crimes were occurring and had some of its bankers allegedly involved in some of the very business Epstein was up to, which is a conflict, if not worse. I wonder what you think we should do with this kind of reporting in a time where people... Well, we should appraise it. Yeah. Go ahead. It's a masterpiece. I've read it twice, I think, of that kind of in-depth reporting, and it takes a new angle.

7:34J.P. Morgan, what did they know, and when did they know it, and what did they do? I salute The New York Times, because that clearly took a great deal of effort and investigative chops and experience and probably editors, or I'm sure editors, what about this, what about that, go back to so-and-so. And how is that different from the world we're in where everyone has an opinion or a conspiracy theory about Epstein versus that kind of dogged reporting? Well, we need more dogged reporting. And, you know, old theme, and I'll repeat, there's nothing like a firsthand witness, Somebody who is a reporter can sit with and say, what happened?

8:25When was it? Do you have any notes? Are there any documents? What do you think this means? The last question is always, who else knows about this? What's their phone number? How can I get in touch with them? Have you spoken with them? And again, the variable in all of this is time. As somebody who's worked for the Post for over 50 years and done, what, 23 books, I have the luxury of time. No one says you have to turn it in now, even a book. If I say I need new time, more time, the publisher, Jonathan Carpet, my publisher, Simon & Schuster, yes. I mean, take it, but then you're putting yourself out and say, you know, it's going to be worth waiting for.

9:28You mentioned that you had the president on tape, and that was agreed to, and that was part of the dispute. I want to pull from some of that, as we've done before, because it's this evidence of how he was thinking then in the White House in the first term. Some things he was thwarted. Now he's back, and we've seen what the second term feels like. Here he was saying, when asked about achievements, what he wanted to do to people in government. Take a listen. I will consider this one of my greatest achievements, getting the scum out of government. And it's scum. It's the lowest form of human garbage, these people.

10:04And I don't mean FBI people. I mean top people in the FBI. What do you hear there? And is that part of his agenda today? Well, I mean, it's retribution. It's for abusion. It's vengeance now. And people who have investigated him or people who have crossed him, he will say things like that and make judgments. But that's his style, and he thinks it's worked for him. And is it worse, by which I mean, is it testing or crossing legal and governing lines more in the second term than the first, when he did seem held back by some? Well, people say that, and there's some evidence of that. I don't know if you can make a full comparison.

10:55But, you know, let's see. I mean, in the Epstein case, you know, it came up a couple of months ago, and now all of a sudden there is this avalanche of new evidence, including drawings and allegedly Trump's signature and a kind of—it's the old boys' club meeting and talking about girls. I mean, it's the undertow, and on the surface, some of it's pretty racy and sexist. Sure. And there's been sex trafficking crimes convicted there. When you hear that language, because he's on the phone with you, that was 2019. He sounded more raw in the call than in, say, a press conference at the time, the scum, the garbage.

11:49And you were recounting from your notes how, at times, hate was a theme. And you were down in Mar-a-Lago in your reporting. Tell me about that. Yeah, I mean, this is—I'm sorry, I gathered some background on this, which is—you have to understand it. And I make inevitably, and I think based on evidence, a comparison between Nixon and Trump. And if you go back and you look at Nixon the day he resigned, he said, I mean, this is, you know, two years after Watergate. And he was held accountable by the system, the media and the investigators. And Nixon said, always remember, there are those who hate you, but those who hate you don't win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself.

12:52What an amazing point. I mean, hate is the piston. Hate is what really destroyed him. And you see his downfall in all of this. Now, if you fast—so this is 1972 to 1974. Fast forward to 2020. Now, this is 45 years later. I'm down in Mar-a-Lago interviewing Trump, President Trump in the last year of his first presidency. And in this interview, Trump has his media person, Dan Scavino. Do you know him at all? Yeah, he did a lot of Internet, social media. Now he's still at the White House this time. That's right. He's kind of the chief Trump media aide. And he got out his laptop to show me some videos.

13:58OK, so you're there with the president at his place, Mar-a-Lago. So you listen. The first video is of Bernie Sanders, the Democratic progressive senator from Vermont. You know, I mean, he's an outspoken anti-Trumper. But it's just a picture of him and not him speaking or Trump speaking. And there's just background music. It's very strange. And Trump is there right behind me. And he looks at Bernie and he says, hate. See the hate. See the hate. And, you know, Bernie Sanders was sitting there quite calmly. I was baffled. And then Trump, again, he's orchestrating all of this. He's producer. He's director.

14:53And I'm listening. There's a video of Senator Elizabeth Warren, the progressive Democrat from Massachusetts there. And, again, Trump's right here and looked at this and looked at what she was just her picture, not something that really communicates a lot. It's kind of because there's the background. And Trump, his voice with the deep conviction that sometimes you hear, hate, hate. So he's getting a rise out of this imagery. He's saying that they're the haters, but he's feeling some sort of strong energy about it. Well, he is. And he sees hate when it's, you know, the videos are kind of passive.

15:47Then Kamala Harris comes on. And again, he's right behind me and he points at this video that he's asked Govino to put up. Hate, hate. And I thought, what the hell is going on? And it's still a mystery to me. I mean, obviously, he feels some hate. No question about that. But he sees in others this hate. And, you know, and then you look at things Trump has said. You know, there is the famous, I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any votes. I mean, who in American life or American politics would say that? But then he goes on. I mean, in one of his giving, he's giving a speech and there's some ruckus around there.

16:50And this is 2017. And the police are arresting people. And Trump is, again, producing and directing. He said, please don't be too nice. Mm-hmm. Then there's another gathering, and Trump says about the Montana governor who assaulted a reporter, said, any guy that can do a body slam, he is my type. You know, so there's— Right. And you talk about being aware, involved in glorifying what Epstein did, that type of crime against minors. You talk about rampant violence here. that there's a theme of him condoning. Yeah, and a scene when it isn't necessarily there. I mean, he says, and he said this often, there has to be retribution, that he really believes now retribution is a form of vengeance, isn't it?

17:57I mean, he says it, and now we know he is practicing it. Let me press you on the comparison to Nixon, because on his way out the door, Nixon is still saying, whether he acted that way or not, he's saying, don't give in to the hate. By contrast, you're showing evidence about Trump giving into it and having a team around him that wants to almost work him up. Yes, but Nixon's resigning. Yeah. As I recall, Trump never. I mean, one of the things, an interview in 1989, Carl Bernstein and I did with Trump. Trump laid out some of his—and this is—he's not in politics. He's a New York real estate entrepreneur at this time.

18:47And one of his doctrines, he says, don't fold. Never fold. Never give in. and we see that practiced in this presidency. Absolutely. And we just saw him join together with Putin again, but not seem to get anything out of it for the United States or our interests in the region, best we can tell. And when you talked to him, you raised the question of this relationship, and he did sound somewhat gullible while you raise sort of the foreign policy implications. Take a listen. Putin respects me, and I respect Putin. I think Putin likes me. I think I like him. So do you want Putin to be afraid of you?

19:39I want Putin to respect our country. And what would he respect? Well, you know, first of all, you know, it's sort of interesting. He said very good things about me. He said Trump is brilliant, and Trump is going to be the new leader and all that. And some of these clowns said, you should repudiate Putin. I said, why would I repute him? But what does Putin respect the former KGB lieutenant colonel? Force, power. I think he respects strength. OK. Go ahead. Isn't it so nice to be able to interview him that way, where I can try to prepare my questions? And there are follow-ups maybe you can think of.

20:20I certainly, looking at it and listening, I can think of more questions I should have asked. But there's some—I mean, the line, I like Putin. I think he likes me. What does that mean? Well, we have intelligence experts, veterans in both parties who say that other leaders, KGB experienced or not, do try to manipulate in foreign policy. That's part of it. And as effective as Trump has been about certain things, in his conversation with you and in general, he sounds almost unaware of that. He just says, they like me, they're bringing me gifts. I mean, he sounds almost naive, although we know in many respects he's not.

21:04No, but on this, he might be. And there is this debate in the intelligence community about is Trump—has he been taken in by Putin? because the Trump-Putin relationship is one of the most important in the world, and having reported on it for years, it's not clear. There are elements of, I like him, he likes me, and then there are elements of, hey, he's got to stop some of these things. Now, if you look at the history of this, which, again, I have the luxury of time to do, what happened in Ukraine. And 2021, Putin issued a manifesto about Ukraine. And he said Ukraine really is and always has been part of Russia.

22:06And one of his pieces of evidence is, it goes back to the ninth century, What American politician can say part of the basis for this is what happened in the 9th century? But here Putin is unfurling this. And if you look at what's happened in Ukraine, it's been manifest, clear, that Putin thinks it belongs to Russia and he's going to take it. And the little element of it goes back to the 9th century. I remember reading and thinking, wow, that's—you know, he's making as forceful an argument as he can. And the year of that was 2021. Do you think the United States got anything out of the Putin summit?

23:05Because he got to be on the world stage at a time where he has, of course, been really viewed as an outlaw or an alleged war criminal. Trump, of course, famously vowed things that didn't happen, like a ceasefire. But did the U.S. get anything out of it? And does Trump then just move past that in your experience? He just sort of ignores the fact that he failed the objectives he'd previewed? Well, he's capable of that. But what's important, what's really going on is, I mean, that war has gotten worse, much, much more violent. Russia really attacking Ukraine in a brutal way, attacking civilians, attacking apartment houses.

23:52I mean, that's the kind of war you don't want in your country. Yeah. I also wanted to ask you about the power of history. We sometimes hear the term living history. Watergate is seen as a high watermark where you're reporting other independent accounts and ultimately what a co-equal branch did in the Watergate committee helped reveal facts in not real time, perhaps, but close to it. The January 6th committee was given high marks by many for doing that and expanding our understanding of what led up to that terrible day. The DOJ, of course, prosecuted many people. Donald Trump won, came in and issued the widest pardons for crimes against the U.S.

24:39in modern history. A very controversial thing that many people have just sort of moved on from. Now it's not enough. They should. Go ahead and then I'll show you something. I know because that's very significant. That's a reward for service. There's a headline I'm sure you've seen. Beyond even the pardoning of the people who stormed the Capitol, you have Republicans establish a new committee, which they say will investigate the January 6th attack. Politico reports the latest chapter in the Republican effort to rewrite the history of events at the Capitol. And I just wanted to get your view on that, because the high-water mark can be a factual investigation.

25:17The January 6th committee was bipartisan. It just wasn't people who supported Trump and opposed him. Some of the Republicans who were on there, famously Liz Cheney, were conservative Republicans who were critical of Trump for Jan 6th. What do you think of the danger or the problem if the government, rather than trying to uncover facts, gets involved in rewriting the history of propaganda? But the element that is so different in the case of Nixon, and it was Catherine Graham who was the publisher-owner of The Washington Post, after Nixon resigned, said to Ben Bradley, the editor, you know, we were fortunate enough to have a president that we were investigating who was mad enough to tape himself.

26:08In other words, Nixon provided the devastating evidence about his criminality. We don't, at least at this point, know whether Trump is taping himself. Maybe he is. We're treated to surprises every day in this era. But can you think of any other time where a government public fact-finding would be trying to erase the facts in the same way that he erased the convictions? Yeah, well, it's all about the quality of evidence, I think. And do they have firsthand—I suspect and hope in the coming years we're going to learn more about what really went on in the White House. I don't know whether Trump has a secret taping system.

27:05I suspect probably he does not. But if he does, we may be beneficiaries of much more firsthand information here. The flip side is that some people look at the Watergate era as catalyzing a posture for the press where everyone wanted to be Woodward and Bernstein, even if they didn't have the goods or they wanted to go on the attack first. We dug up, because we like to get into it here, you and Tom Brokaw, 1978. Wow. Discussing that temptation, perhaps. And as we know, there are plenty of people on the Internet who are critical of traditional journalism and say, oh, it's also negative, or it just is critical first.

27:59So let's take a look at this. This is from 1978. Do you think that that standard has been sliding some, that the press has been kind of thrashing about in an effort to capitalize on another Watergate and finding more shadow than scandal often? I don't think the press collectively is aware of or fully aware of the power that it has or we have. And I think with that comes a responsibility and a caution that perhaps is not there that should be. Ever measured, Bob Woodward, does that apply today as well? Well, I mean, I'm sorry. I noticed that my hair was not gray at that time. First things first.

28:43Those were the days. Yeah, first things. I mean, wow. That was a long time ago. I'm sorry your question. Well, you said— Because I was—I'm sorry. You were mesmerized. Well, I apologize for my— You said the press isn't always collectively fully aware of its power, and with that comes a responsibility and sometimes perhaps a caution that's not there, which should be. Yes, I think that's exactly right. And again, this goes to being the beneficiary of having time. Each night you do your show, you sit here and you can't say to the director and the producer, oh, well, let's hold all that and I'll do it tomorrow and do nothing.

29:32But in daily journalism, you have to produce for having the license The Washington Post has given me to take time and publisher Simon & Schuster to write books. I can always say I need more time. And time against the problem is the golden variable here. It's interesting you say that, because I'll share, you know, I was talking to someone recently about how in print, when it's not ready, it shouldn't be published. And sometimes, as you said, the writer says, I don't have it. I need more. Sometimes the editor says, I don't think you have it. But having done both types of journalism, when we're doing print writing, you have that checkpoint.

30:24And with TV, right, live TV news, we're going on the air. If you're sick, someone else will replace you, but we're going on the air either way. And so the responsibility then becomes, how do you talk about something if it hasn't been fully confirmed? Classic breaking news example is in the first moments of a shooting, we don't expect to know a lot. And we try in real time to tell the viewer, we don't know yet whether it's one or two active shooters. Or the authorities said this, that's preliminary. We try to really be clear about what we don't know. But unlike the article, we're still out there.

31:00And then the Internet, of course, has made it even faster. Your thoughts? Yeah. I mean, and again, this idea of caution is really important. I remember after Nixon resigned, Catherine Graham, the owner, publisher, again, wrote Carl Bernstein and myself a letter, but it wasn't on stationery. It was just a yellow legal sheet of paper. and it said, dear Carl and Bob, Nixon's gone. Don't start thinking too highly of yourselves. And then she said, let me give you some advice. And then she pulled out all the stops and she said, beware the demon pomposity. Great advice to all of us. All of us as humans.

31:53And the demon pomposity. And especially in this town. Yeah, well, and I think in any town. I mean, I just think it doesn't work and it can be very self-defeating. And I love that and keep a copy of it on the wall in my office. You do. You still have it. Yes, because the demon pomposity is out there. and one of the things that I think it takes a while to understand, people don't like that. Readers, viewers, if you come on and you're not, I think you're very restrained, but if you come on and you sound pompous, it doesn't work. It can really nullify and crucify, really, what you do. You're absolutely right.

32:48Especially because we're dealing with information, people have different expertise and access to information. So to say, oh, you might know more about this means you know more than everyone is always going to be false. Someone is going to know more about other things, you know. As for the pomposity, it's a perfect lead-in to a great film that might have gotten other journalists high on their horses, because you were both portrayed, you and Carl, by such big actors, especially in that time. Let's take a look at All the President's Men. I don't think you're saying what you mean. I know exactly what I mean.

33:30Not here. I can't tell from this whether Hunt works for Coulson or Coulson works for Hunt. May I have it? You can tell me the conclusions, aren't you? Yes. I'm not looking for a fight. I'm not looking for a fight either. If you're going to do it, do it right. You're my nurse. If you're going to hype it, hype it with the facts. I don't mind what you did. I don't mind the way you did. Did your life change at all after the movie? And I know the point about not being taken in by it all, but it also must have been kind of an interesting thrill. Well, I think it's something that, again, knew Catherine Graham's advice, beware the demon pomposity.