by Bob Woodward
In Fauci’s view some of Trump’s early decisions had been his finest hours—restricting travel from China (January 31) and Europe (March 11) and asking sick Americans to stay home and all to practice good hygiene with his initial “15 Days to Slow the Spread” (March 16) and then extending it for another 30 days (March 29). The president had stepped up to the task and had listened to Birx, Redfield, himself and others.
When Trump engaged in wishful thinking about the virus, musing it would disappear on its own, Fauci at least could correct the record on television.
Then on April 7 Trump said of the virus, “It will go away.” He had said that many times before but on that day, Mark Meadows, in his first week as White House chief of staff, had installed a new White House press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany. A 31-year-old unbending Trump campaign spokesperson and Harvard Law School graduate, McEnany limited Fauci’s television appearances.
Under the system, all the networks and cable news outlets had to submit a request for a Fauci interview in writing to the Department of Health and Human Services, who then in turn would pass it to the White House for approval. It was like the requests were disappearing into a black hole. No action, no response. One in ten of the requests would be approved so it would not look like Fauci was being completely muzzled.
On April 17, in the middle of what was supposed to be the 30-day extension of the “15 Days to Slow the Spread,” Trump tweeted “Liberate Minnesota,” “Liberate Michigan,” and “Liberate Virginia,” expressing support for a subversion of his own guidelines. Fauci’s jaw dropped. He asked his colleagues, What was going on?
The answer was obvious. The Finest Hours were over. The White House and Trump were laser-determined to open up the country. That was Plan A. There was no Plan B, an essential, Fauci believed, when dealing with a virus that was out of control.
Fauci gave an interview to Science magazine and said that when things were said at the Coronavirus Task Force press conferences which were not factual, “I can’t jump in front of the microphone and push him down.”
That was as edgy as Fauci got in public though he often adopted a challenging tone with the president at the daily task force press conferences.
After the president said once again that the virus would disappear, Fauci decided he had better be the skunk at the picnic at the next task force meeting, which was held in the Oval Office and was supposed to be confidential.
“We need to be careful,” Fauci said, intentionally addressing not just Trump but the other task force members who were present. “This is not going to just disappear. It’s not going to go away by itself. It’s going to be up to us.” They had to continue to mitigate and find a vaccine.
“I know a guy who got sick,” the president responded, repeating an anecdote they had all heard before, changing the subject and overpowering the session.
“The president is on a separate channel,” Fauci later told others. Trump’s leadership was “rudderless.”
Another time Fauci made an appeal to others in the Oval Office after the president had strayed from the facts in the press briefing. “We can’t let the president be out there being vulnerable,” Fauci said, “saying something that’s going to come back and bite him.”
Pence, chief of staff Mark Meadows, Kushner and aide Stephen Miller tensed up at once. It was palpable to Fauci. It was as if they were saying you can’t be talking to the president that way. They were an unyielding fortress around the president.
Often when Fauci challenged Trump on something he had said, Trump would jump in and change the subject. Fauci marveled at Trump, who would hopscotch from one topic to another. “His attention span is like a minus number,” Fauci said privately.
Trump seemed interested in one outcome. “His sole purpose is to get reelected,” Fauci told an associate. Fauci was particularly disappointed in Kushner, who talked like a cheerleader as if everything was great.
Fauci tried to preserve the candor but with the gentle touch.
“Mr. President,” he said another time, “I really would be careful about saying it that way. They are going to come back and criticize you.”
“Who gives a shit?” Trump replied. “They criticize me no matter what I do anyway.” Trump never invited Fauci or the other medical professionals to brief him in detail or provide a tutorial. Nor did Fauci ever ask for extended time or time alone with the president.
* * *
Fauci gave high marks to Matt Pottinger for realizing China’s deceit. Going back to late January, Fauci and Pottinger had a serious conversation about how China had covered up the 2003 SARS epidemic, not telling the public the truth for three months after the outbreak. Fauci publicly said China had been “egregiously nontransparent” during SARS.
For Pottinger, the new virus fit the old pattern. China was doing it again. “They’re the source of it,” Pottinger said. “You know you can’t believe anything they say. I know them. I was a reporter there. They’re all lying. They’re full of crap. It’s worse than they’re really saying.”
Pottinger said he had a doctor friend in China with impeccable credentials and access to solid information who was passing it on. The doctor said, “Don’t believe their numbers. They’re all lying to you.”
Fauci thought Pottinger was talking as if the sky was falling and way overstating the case against China. “We got to be more aggressive in trying to control it,” Pottinger told Fauci, “because countries like Singapore and Taiwan have been able to control it by being very aggressive in shutting things down.” Hong Kong had done the same.
When the pandemic later exploded, Fauci said, “Wait a minute. Matt was right all along. This thing is really out of control.”
* * *
Despite Trump’s ambivalent public statements that he thought the virus would dissipate with or without a vaccine, the push for a vaccine was nonstop. As part of Operation Warp Speed, drug companies were being prepaid billions of dollars to manufacture millions of doses of drugs that might not pass trials or even be used. The design was to ensure the drug companies immediately would have the supply after a new vaccine was approved.
In an Oval Office task force meeting at 4:00 p.m. on June 2, Moncef Slaoui, the new vaccine czar and head of Operation Warp Speed, and all the others told the president that December was the earliest a vaccine might be ready. More likely it would be January, February or March 2021.
“Can’t we get a vaccine earlier?” Trump asked. “What about the fall? How about in September and October?”
The answer was no.
Fauci said the president might hear or read about the Chinese or the Brits or others claiming they could get a vaccine in September or October. But that would not be one that cleared the stringent U.S. regulatory hurdles. It would be almost impossible to prove such an early vaccine would be safe and effective.
* * *
Trump called me unexpectedly on Friday, June 19, at 10:30 a.m. We had not spoken for over two weeks.
I said I was finishing a draft of this book, and was running into some roadblocks with his calls with Chinese president Xi Jinping.
“I had very good calls with him,” Trump said, “but since they sent us the plague I’m not so thrilled with them, okay?”
I reminded him he had previously told me this. But my reporting showed that some of his aides were suggesting something more sinister. “There’s some evidence that this is quite dark and nefarious. That they’re allowing—allowed the virus to spread. What do you think?”
“I’m the one that said that louder and clearer than anybody,” Trump said, “if you want to know the truth. I’m the leader of that group. Because I think they could have kept it—Now, it is starting up in Beijing, which is interesting. Because I was saying—but, you know, they’ve got a problem in Beijing.”
“What are they up to?” I asked. “What’s their motive?”
“I think they could have done a hell of a lot better job stopping it coming out to the rest of the world, includi
ng the United States and Europe,” Trump said.
“Do you think they intentionally let it come to the United States and the rest of the world?” I asked.
“There’s a possibility. I don’t say they did, but there’s certainly a possibility.” He added, “But it came to Europe, the United States and the rest of the world. Yep.”
“If they actually did this intentionally, President Trump—”
“The ink wasn’t dry on my great deal on trade,” he said. “They’re buying a lot of stuff. And they’re—by the way, they are buying. And that’s one of the things I watch every day. They’re buying a lot. They’re buying tremendous amounts of farm product and stuff. But the ink wasn’t dry when the plague came in.”
Two days earlier, The Wall Street Journal had published an excerpt of former national security adviser John Bolton’s book, The Room Where It Happened. In it, Bolton wrote of a meeting between Trump and Xi: “Trump then, stunningly, turned the conversation to the coming U.S. presidential election, alluding to China’s economic capability and pleading with Xi to ensure he’d win. He stressed the importance of farmers and increased Chinese purchases of soybeans and wheat in the electoral outcome.”
Trump went on. “Bob, watch what happens, okay. Remember, I told you, the stock market is close to an all-time high and we’re not finished with the pandemic yet. I have—I have a rally tomorrow night in Oklahoma. Over 1.2 million people have signed up. We can only take about 50, 60 thousand. Because, you know, it’s a big arena, right? But we can take 22,000 in one arena, 40,000 in another. We’re going to have two arenas loaded. But think of that. Nobody ever had rallies like that.”
“Your reaction to the protests?” I asked, switching subjects.
“I think that the weak liberal Democrats have handled their cities very badly. And I think the strong people have handled it very well. You’ll see what happens in Oklahoma. You’ll see what happens in Oklahoma. We’re all set.”
“We share one thing in common,” I said. “We’re white, privileged. My father was a lawyer and a judge in Illinois. And we know what your dad did. And do you have any sense that that privilege has isolated and put you in a cave, to a certain extent, as it put me—and I think lots of white, privileged people—in a cave? And that we have to work our way out of it to understand the anger and the pain, particularly, Black people feel in this country?”
“No,” Trump said. “You really drank the Kool-Aid, didn’t you? Just listen to you,” he said, his voice mocking and incredulous. “Wow. No, I don’t feel that at all.”
“You don’t?”
“I’ve done more for the Black community than any president in history with the possible exception of Lincoln,” repeating one of his favorite lines. He had said so publicly at least five times by that point in 2020 alone.
“I don’t think it’s the Kool-Aid, Mr. President, I think there is a reality out there that Black people feel. And part of our job is—I mean, you and I talked about this some months ago, that you’re governing in an environment where there are two Americas—”
“Yep,” he said. “And by the way, Bob, it’s been that way for a long time. Longer than when I’ve been here. It’s been that way under Obama and it’s been that way a long time. There was great division under Obama. It was a much more silent division, but there was tremendous hatred and tremendous division, more than there is now.”
“You’re convinced of that?”
“Yeah. I am.”
In the 2016 election, Trump had clearly seen and used those divisions—the seething undertow of rage and resentment.
“Look, we talked about this,” I said. “We talked about history’s clock, remember that?” Six months earlier in December I had referenced Barbara Tuchman’s famous 1962 book The Guns of August about how World War I had been an accidental war. I had described the beginning of Tuchman’s book to Trump: a scene about the old order not realizing it was dying on history’s clock.
“And I said my analysis was that you came and seized history’s clock when you were elected. And that the Democrats and your party, the Republicans, did not know what was going on in America. Remember that? Agree with that?”
“Sure,” Trump said. “I do. I do. It’s still true. It’s still true about, you know, the Democrats and many people in the Republican Party. But I know what’s going on. I know what’s going on.”
“There’s been a shift,” I said. “And it’s substantial. And it’s, I think, incumbent on white, privileged people like myself, like you, to say—and I don’t think this is Kool-Aid. I think it is understanding points of view that may not come to us naturally.”
“But I don’t have to be there to understand a point of view,” he said. “I don’t have to be Black to understand the Black point of view. I don’t have to have gone through personal slavery in order to understand the horrible atrocity that people have suffered. I don’t have to. You know, I don’t have to put myself in that position. I can fully understand it without being in that position.”
“Do you consider it an atrocity?”
“Oh, absolutely,” he said. “Slavery? Absolutely.”
“And what’s happened after, up to this day, that we do not have a system of equality and equal opportunity?”
You can hear him exhale on the tape. “Well—”
“I’m pushing,” I said.
“It’s gone on for a hundred years, Bob.”
“Sure, but—”
“It’s been going on for a hundred years plus,” he said.
“You see what I’m asking?”
“I fully do. No, it’s very fair. It’s been going on for a hundred years plus. It’s been going on for a long time. And we’ve made a lot of progress in a lot of different ways. And a lot of progress is being made as we speak—I mean right now. More than you would even think. But this has been going on for many, many years. Many, many years.”
“We’ve talked about this,” I said. “Your job is to bring people together?”
“I agree,” he said. “But before I can bring them together, sometimes you have to bring them to a point. We’ve made a lot of progress in the last short period of time. Don’t forget. Until the Chinese plague came in, we had the lowest unemployment in the history of this country for African Americans. We had the lowest unemployment numbers by far, African American. We had the lowest for Asian, Hispanic too. But we had the best employment numbers in the history of our country. And then we got hit with the plague. Now here’s what’s happening. I’m building up the economy.” He said the recovery would not just be a “V” shape but and almost an “I”—apparently meaning straight back up. “Look at the job numbers, look at the retail sales numbers. Look at these numbers that are coming in. Wait till you see the third quarter, how good it’s going be, when your book comes out.”
I wanted to move beyond the economic numbers. He did not.
“Look at the numbers,” he said and repeated. “We had the highest employment numbers in history two weeks ago. We had the best retail sales numbers increase in history two days ago. In history, Bob.”
“But this—”
“Wait till you see the numbers come in,” he said.
“For people out there struggling, for people—”
“Yeah, but they won’t be struggling for long, Bob. They’re struggling because we had to turn it off. Because if I didn’t turn it off, we would have lost three million lives instead of 150,000, or whatever the final number will be. But it will be in that vicinity. We would have lost three million lives. And you know what? That’s not acceptable, three million lives.”
I didn’t know what projections he based that figure on.
“Okay,” I said. “Let me ask this question, please. Bear with me on this, because I think it’s one of the pillars of trying to understand. And if I’m a Black man out there, how am I going to say to myself, ah, President Trump understands my plight, my pain? And he is—the numbers, yes. I understand the work on the economy.”
“But do you think that the person out there wants the president to understand how they feel?”
“I do. Let me just tell you, I passed criminal justice reform. Obama couldn’t get it done—I passed opportunity zones. Obama and all these people that came before me, not only Obama, couldn’t get it done. Nobody could get done what I got done. I got prison reform done. I got criminal justice reform done. I got—forget all about the good economic numbers, which will be just as good in a very short—because I turned it off and then I turned it back on.”
“Have you won the hearts of minorities and Black people in this country who feel pain and anguish and are angry? Have you won their hearts? That’s my question.”
“Okay, you ready?” he asked. “Yes. I did, prior to the plague coming in. But now a lot of those jobs that were, were won—the Black people had the lowest unemployment numbers in history!”
“Okay, but they’re, if you’re—”
“They had the best jobs! They were making more money than they ever made!”
“You look at the polls, you look at the protests, and you talk to people—” I said.
“They’ll be employed very soon, Bob. It’s all coming back. They’re going to be employed. Okay—before the plague, they had the best numbers ever. Everybody was doing great. They were getting tremendous increases. They were making more money and people were happy. When the plague came in from China, that was the—then a lot of people lost jobs. Those jobs are all coming back. Black people will all be employed very soon, just like they were before. And the numbers will even be better.”
