Rage

by Bob Woodward

  “Well how come they got hit so hard?” Trump asked.

  “They couldn’t control it. I think they didn’t realize what it was. And your experts can’t get the real numbers from them.”

  “That’s right,” he said. “But the numbers are substantial. Very, very substantial.”

  “We are at one of these pivot points in history,” I said. “And you are in charge.”

  “I had the greatest economy that we’ve ever had,” Trump said mournfully. “Stock market hit all-time highs in history. I was riding so high, the market was riding so high.”

  The stock market had been climbing steadily since 2009—regularly hitting new highs—until the coronavirus-related shutdowns resulted in a historic crash in February 2020. At the time of our interview, the markets were showing signs of recovery.

  The question, he said, was, “Can we take this all the way to that very special date of November 3rd?”

  FORTY-SIX

  Trump called me unexpectedly on Wednesday, July 8, before his day of meetings with Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

  “I’m so busy,” Trump said. “I don’t have time to breathe.” I don’t think he intended any reference to George Floyd.

  “This will be our 17th conversation for this book,” I said.

  “All I ask for is fairness,” Trump said. “And, you know, I’m sure I won’t get it, but that’s okay. I’m used to that. But I do ask for fairness because nobody’s done what I’ve done. Nobody. Did you get the new list of new things that were added on?” It was a long, boilerplate list of dozens of large and small matters, and I said I did receive it.

  What, I asked, was he trying to accomplish in the two speeches he had just given over the Fourth of July weekend, one at Mount Rushmore and the other at the White House?

  Both painted divisive portraits of some citizens threatening the country—a kind of reemergence in tone of “American carnage” from his inaugural address. As best I could tell, presidents of both parties universally gave unifying and inspiring speeches on July 4—a freebie of goodwill. “In the Mount Rushmore speech you talk about a new far-left fascism,” I said. He had said there was “a merciless campaign to wipe out our history. Angry mobs are trying to tear down statues of our Founders,” and “this left-wing cultural revolution is designed to overthrow the American Revolution.”

  I said, “There’s some people who represent that kind of anger, the radical left. But it’s not much.”

  The next day, in the White House speech, Trump had said that like the American heroes who defeated the Nazis, “We are now in the process of defeating the radical left, the Marxists, the anarchists, the agitators, the looters.”

  I said there were no Marxists left.

  “No,” Trump said, “that’s wrong, Bob. Black Lives Matter, what they do is they literally have it in their website that they’re Marxists.”

  One of the cofounders claimed in 2015 that she and other organizers of Black Lives Matter were “trained Marxists.” It was not, however, on their website. The Black Lives Matter phrase has been adopted as a reformist slogan by the broader social movement for racial justice.

  “What are you saying to people?” I asked the president. “In the second speech you said ‘our movement,’ referring to your movement and your base. ‘Never forget, we are one family and one nation.’ ”

  “Right,” Trump said.

  “Black Lives Matter people look at all of this and they say they’re not being invited in. That you’ve put up a wall around your base. And the question is, what’s your intent?”

  He didn’t answer but said, “I have done more for the Black community than any other president other than Abraham Lincoln.”

  I said that Lyndon Johnson certainly had done more. The passing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act was a monumental achievement. It outlawed discrimination based on race, religion or sex, further mandated the desegregation of schools, the prohibition of racial discrimination in employment and protections against the unequal application of requirements for voter registration.

  “But it’s about the heart,” I said.

  “I have done a tremendous amount for the Black community,” Trump said. “And, honestly, I’m not feeling any love. As soon as the China virus came in—as soon as the plague, China virus, came in—as soon as it came in—those poll numbers all of a sudden started inching back” down “8 or 9 or 10 percent. And I don’t understand that. I don’t. Because nobody blames me for the virus.”

  Of course, many people, and perhaps history, might blame him for mishandling the crisis.

  “It’s a matter of the heart and the spirit,” I said. “Are you saying to people who are Black Lives Matter, who are minorities in this country, you are welcome here?”

  “The door is very wide open,” he said. “I want to include all people. I want to include all Americans. The door is absolutely open.” And he went back to his talking points about all he had done for Black Americans.

  “So, what’s your goal here?”

  “My goal is to do a great job as president,” he said. He talked about numbers, jobs growth. He seemed not to understand that I was trying to ask about outreach and healing.

  “You’ll do a third book in the next year,” he said. “Next year’s going to be a fantastic year. Watch.”

  “As you know,” I said, “the virus is on fire. Absolutely on fire.”

  “It’s only on fire because of our testing. Because we’re testing 40 million people,” he said.

  But the percentage of positive tests was also going up—a key indicator of trouble.

  Trump also said that the death rate was down.

  I reminded Trump that Fauci had said publicly earlier in the week that “it’s a false narrative to take comfort in a lower rate of death” because with the huge growth in cases the death rate would go up in a matter of weeks.

  He didn’t answer but recycled his arguments with Fauci.

  “The question is, where are we now?” I asked.

  “We’re in great shape,” Trump said. “Most of the country is headed absolutely away from the virus. We’re totally set with our hospitals. We’re totally set.”

  “Okay, but it’s on fire, sir,” I said.

  “Because we did 40 million people, anybody that has the sniffles—any kid that has a little bit of a cold, they test positive. And it’s going to go away in two days. It’s frankly, it’s ridiculous.”

  I was surprised that Trump was trivializing a positive test in a child as he continued to criticize his public health officials.

  “Have you called Tony Fauci in and sat him down in the Oval Office?” I asked.

  “He couldn’t win that argument with me,” Trump said. “He cannot win that argument.” If he hadn’t acted, he said, “We would have had three million dead instead of 130,000 as of today.” Trump was correct. The travel restrictions on China and Europe and the initial shutdowns did save lives.

  “As a citizen, somebody who lives here,” I said, “I’m worried as I can be about this whole thing.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Bob. Okay?” Trump said. “Don’t worry about it. We’ll get to do another book. You’ll find I was right.”

  * * *

  “What I’ve learned in the world of Trump is news cycles don’t last very long,” Kushner said on Monday, July 13, as he reviewed the overall Trump strategic picture with a top staffer.

  “He’s had a string of bad luck,” Kushner said, especially with the virus. “He’ll get a couple of breaks along the way, and when he does, hopefully we’ll take advantage of them. So he’s getting ready for the fight and his head’s getting in the game. It’s also about just getting his head out of D.C. Right? D.C. is filled with a lot of traps.”

  Meanwhile the public polling across the board showed Biden beating Trump by double digits and winning the battleground states. Kushner’s three separate private polls, however, painted a much more favorable picture. He did his own data with big samples.
“Our polls basically show that he’s either ahead or in the margin of error in all the states he won last time.”

  Kushner continued, “The whole thing with polling is it’s about getting likely voters, number one, as opposed to registered voters. Public polling is using registered voters, not likely, and they’re definitely skewing the turnout model. And so we believe it is a different race than other people believe.”

  So it was similar to 2016. Trump voters simply were more enthusiastic and highly motivated. Kushner’s turnout model reflected a much higher percentage of Trump voters going to the polls.

  “Biden’s had about as good a couple months as he could get, being hidden,” Kushner said. “And so at some point there’s going to be a real discussion of him.” Biden’s reliance on Bernie Sanders’s and Elizabeth Warren’s liberal ideas amounted to a “long political suicide note,” Kushner said.

  “The goal” with Trump, Kushner said, “is to get his head from governing to campaigning.”

  When I learned about this, I was incredulous. In the midst of the largest public health crisis in a century, Kushner thought it was time to turn to campaigning?

  But the virus was all about governing. It could not be campaigned away.

  “I think,” Kushner continued, “that for five years”—since Trump started to run—“he basically was on offense. And then for four and a half months”—since the virus exploded—“he was on defense. And the goal is to get him back to offense.”

  The offense soon appeared. First, the White House released a document listing the number of times Fauci had been wrong in his predictions about Covid-19, a highly unusual and, from a health point of view, irresponsible effort to undermine the chief of infectious diseases. Fauci had privately acknowledged he was not by any means always correct. But polling showed that he was trusted by at least twice as many people as Trump.

  Second, on Tuesday, July 14, Trump took an early opportunity to attack Biden in what was billed as a press conference in the Rose Garden on China. Instead he spoke for 57 minutes and mentioned Biden 30 times before taking questions for six minutes. Because Trump was reading from some text or notes, he looked down many times and the speech had none of the fire and passion of his rally performances.

  New York Times Chief White House Correspondent Peter Baker wrote in an article that appeared on page 17, “Even for a president who rarely sticks to the script and wanders from thought to thought, it was one of the most rambling performances of his presidency.”

  Third, on Wednesday night, July 15, Trump replaced Brad Parscale as his campaign manager, demoting him to a senior adviser. Trump was still angry about the low-attendance, empty-seat rally in Tulsa and the poor public poll numbers.

  This effectively ended Parscale’s hope for a movie, a new cash haul from Republicans who might want his expertise in a 2024 presidential race and a place in the campaign manager hall of fame.

  Trump named Bill Stepien, a longtime political aide, his new campaign manager. Kushner considered Stepien one of the most talented political operatives around. They were close, and Kushner’s control of the campaign would continue.

  * * *

  Trump called me unexpectedly on the morning of Tuesday, July 21. The reason, he said, was “to say hello. How are you doing?” I turned on my recorder and we held our 18th interview for about half an hour. The manuscript for this book was due to my publisher this day.

  “Things are getting bad,” I said, “aren’t they?”

  “Bad in what way?” he asked as if he was surprised.

  “The virus,” I said. New daily cases were at about 60,000, with deaths near 1,000 each day.

  “Well, it’s flaring up. It’s flaring up all over the world, Bob. By the way, all over the world. That was one thing I noticed last week. You know? They talk about this country. All over the world, it’s flaring up. But we have it under control.”

  “What?” I said. He noticed last week? The virus had been out of control for months.

  Texas and Florida were being hit, he said. But his ambivalence was on full display in the next sentence: “But we have it under control. We have it absolutely—I believe it’s—but it’s a tough, there’s no question.”

  “What grade would you give yourself on the handling of the coronavirus?” I asked.

  “Well, I think I’d give myself a very good grade because what we’ve done—you know, we were totally—when I took over, there was nothing, there were no provisions.” No one was prepared for this.

  “What have you learned about yourself?” I asked.

  Once again he returned to Mueller’s investigation. “I was fighting the fake Russia thing.”

  I asked again about the virus. “When we started talking in December, if I said to you we’re gonna have a virus that comes and kills 140,000 people in this country, you would think I was smoking something,” I said.

  “Well, you know all my life I’ve heard the word pandemic,” he said. “But somehow you never think of that as a modern-day thing that could happen.”

  “But it’s happened,” I said. “Biden is not really your opponent. The virus is your opponent. Do you agree?”

  “Well, I think that’s largely true,” he said. “It’s the virus and it’s a radical left group of people, and it’s the media. The media is my opponent, regardless of anything. No matter how well we do, they will say we didn’t do well.”

  “But 140,000 people have died,” I said.

  “But we have a much bigger country,” the president said. “If you look at China, they have many more people that died. They just don’t report it. If you look at Russia, if you look at India—”

  The U.S. at this time had the eighth-highest per capita death rate.

  “Jared said you are getting back on offense,” I said. “Is this the strategy—back on offense?” I listed the examples of the previous week—attacking Biden in the Rose Garden, the White House attack on Fauci and the removal of his campaign manager.

  “I have a very flexible strategy, Bob. I’ve had it for a long time. My whole life has been flexible strategy and I’ve done very well. And I had it in the last campaign, too. I was very flexible. I changed campaign managers three times.”

  “Is it offense now? Or is it governing?” I asked. “You understand why I’m asking?”

  “I won the last campaign in the last four weeks. But I would really say I won it in the last week. I did rallies, I did many, many things in the last week.”

  “Okay, but is it offense, or is it governing?”

  “I think it’s really both. It’s a combination of governing and a political campaign. We have 105 days. Now, to me, 105 days is a very long time.… It’s an eternity.”

  “In July, it’s not clear what the plan is,” I said.

  He mentioned immigration, health care and DACA.

  I returned to the virus and recalled for him a discussion we had in April about a “strategy and a matrix and a roadmap” for him to lead.

  “Well, I am leading. But, you know, you have a lot of great leaders around the world and their countries are stymied. We’re not stymied. But you have a lot of great leaders around the world, and this has affected them very, very powerfully.”

  What about the plan? I asked.

  “I’ve got 106 days,” he said. “That’s a long time. You know, if I put out a plan now, people won’t even remember it in a hundred—I won the last election in the final week.”

  “No, no,” I said. “But it’s not just put out the plan, it’s execute it, isn’t it?”

  “No. I am executing. You’ll see it starting. I’ve already started. But you will see things being signed—documents being signed, not just—this isn’t just a plan, this is getting it done. I will have immigration done. I will have health care done.

  “I think we’re going to have vaccines soon,” he said. “I think we already have them. But they’re in tests. And you’ll see them being announced over the next month. Now would you view that as a game changer
?”

  I again asked for the grade he would give himself.

  “I give ourselves an A. But the grade is incomplete, and I’ll tell you why. If we come up with the vaccines and therapeutics, then I give myself an A-plus.”

  “I’ve talked to lots of your predecessors,” I said. “I never talked to Nixon, but I talked to many, many of them. They get philosophical when I ask the question, what have you learned about yourself? And that’s the question on you: What have you learned about yourself?”

  Trump sighed audibly. “I can handle more than other people can handle. Because, and I’ll tell you what, whether I learned about it myself—more people come up to me and say—and I mean very strong people, people that are successful, even. A lot of people. They say, I swear to you, I don’t know how it’s possible for you to handle what you handle. How you’ve done this, with the kind of opposition, the kind of shenanigans, the kind of illegal witch hunts.”

  “It’s a tough job,” I acknowledged.

  “Tougher for me than probably just about anybody,” he said. “I would think.”

  “People are worried about the virus,” I said.

  “I know that, Bob. But the virus has nothing to do with me. It’s not my fault. It’s—China let the damn virus out.”

  “But you have the problem,” I said. “And the question is, what’s the plan? How are you going to lead?” In November, I continued, “The question is we’re going to look back and we’re going to say, end of July, August, September, October, what happened with the virus?”

  “I have opposition like nobody has. And that’s okay. I’ve had that all my life. I’ve always had it. And this has been—my whole life has been like this. In the meantime, right now, I’m looking at the White House. Okay? I’m staring right at the walls of the White House.” It seemed to be his way of reminding me that he was the president.

  He continued, “We’ve got 105 days. Let’s see how it turns out. I was unlucky with the virus.”

  “But you got it,” I said. “The country’s got it. And the world’s got it. But you’re in charge of the country.… You’re in charge of the national interest.”