Famed Watergate journalist Bob Woodward is releasing an audio book that will include 20 taped interviews he did with Donald Trump from 2016-2020, according to CNN.
The audio book, which is slated to be released next Tuesday, is titled: "The Trump Tapes." The interviews — conducted before Trump was elected president and during his years in the White House — last eight hours.
CNN noted that in the book's introduction, Woodward says that he is releasing the recordings in part because "hearing Trump speak is a completely different experience to reading the transcripts or listening to snatches of interviews on television or the internet."
The news network, which obtained a copy of the audio book, said Woodward describes Trump as "raw, profane, divisive and deceptive. His language is often retaliatory."
"Yet, you will also hear him engaging and entertaining, laughing, ever the host," he said. "He is trying to win me over, sell his presidency to me. The full-time salesman. I wanted to put as much of Trump's voice, his own words, out there for the historical record and so people could hear and judge and make their own assessments."
In a June 2020 interview, which came after nationwide protests over George Floyd's death, Trump was asked whether he had assistance in writing his speech declaring himself the "president of law and order," according to CNN.
"I get, I get people," Trump told Woodward. "They come up with ideas. But the ideas are mine, Bob. The ideas are mine. Want to know something? Everything is mine. You know, everything. Every part of it."
Trump had labeled Woodward a "con man" after the journalist's book, "Peril" with co-author Robert Costa, said that the Joint Chiefs of Staff chair, Gen. Mark Milley, twice called his Chinese counterpart in the final months of the Trump administration to reassure him that the then-president had no plans to attack China in an effort to remain in power.
"Does anybody really believe that longtime Con Man Bob Woodward, and his lightweight lapdog assistant Robert Costa, are implying in their book of fiction that I was planning to go to war with China, but that one of the dumber generals in the military called the Chinese to tell them that he will inform them if this action proceeds further?" Trump asked in a statement.
Jeffrey Rodack ✉
Jeffrey Rodack, who has nearly a half century in news as a senior editor and city editor for national and local publications, has covered politics for Newsmax for nearly seven years.
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