Full Comment - Bob Woodward on ‘Question Man’ Biden and Trump 2024

00:00:00.000 Did you lock the front door?

00:00:04.060 Check.

00:00:04.620 Closed the garage door?

00:00:05.780 Yep.

00:00:06.300 Installed window sensors, smoke sensors, and HD cameras with night vision?

00:00:09.780 No.

00:00:10.620 And you set up credit card transaction alerts, a secure VPN for a private connection,

00:00:14.060 and continuous monitoring for our personal info on the dark web?

00:00:17.080 Uh, I'm looking into it?

00:00:19.600 Stress less about security.

00:00:21.360 Choose security solutions from Telus for peace of mind at home and online.

00:00:25.220 Visit telus.com slash total security to learn more.

00:00:28.800 Conditions apply.

00:00:30.000 Whether you own a bustling hair salon or a hot new bakery,

00:00:34.920 you need business insurance that can keep up with your evolving needs.

00:00:38.780 With flexible coverage options from TD Insurance, you only pay for what you need.

00:00:42.940 TD.

00:00:44.060 Ready for you.

00:00:49.660 Hi, I'm Anthony Fury.

00:00:51.040 Thanks for joining us for the latest episode of Full Comment.

00:00:53.720 Don't forget to subscribe to be notified when new episodes drop.

00:00:56.880 Our guest today knows a thing or two about covering American politics and American presidents.

00:01:02.140 Bob Woodward has been a journalist with the Washington Post since 1971,

00:01:06.700 winning two Pulitzer Prizes and breaking the Watergate story with Carl Bernstein.

00:01:10.840 Robert Redford played Bob in the movie.

00:01:12.920 How is Joe Biden faring?

00:01:15.740 Will Donald Trump make a comeback?

00:01:17.940 And what's the future of news and journalism?

00:01:20.460 Bob Woodward is the perfect person to put these questions to, and he joins us now.

00:01:24.900 Bob, how are you?

00:01:25.560 Thanks for joining us.

00:01:27.740 Thank you.

00:01:28.420 So it's been one year since the U.S. presidential elections.

00:01:32.380 How is Joe Biden faring at this point?

00:01:35.180 Well, we recount in our book, Peril, that Robert Costa and I did the first months of the administration.

00:01:45.220 I mean, we've learned some things about him that have not been known.

00:01:49.960 First of all, at meetings where he's trying to make a decision, he's the question man.

00:01:55.960 He has lots of questions and is often quite impatient.

00:02:00.780 He turned the corner on the virus, at least temporarily.

00:02:05.900 You know, we're going to see whether that is long term.

00:02:09.100 He passed one big bill, the Rescue Plan, for $1.9 trillion, a big victory.

00:02:19.680 And he started to declare that he was getting out of Afghanistan.

00:02:26.400 It turns out now he's working on other legislation.

00:02:31.080 He's had some successes run into a stone wall on others.

00:02:38.940 Afghanistan turns out to have been a giant disaster. 1.00

00:02:44.940 Something his aides and Biden say, well, in the long run, the American people are going to be glad we're out of Afghanistan.

00:02:54.940 I think that's true, but the process of getting out and that decision making process is going to be examined for his whole presidency.

00:03:08.600 And on the issue of his political support, the poll numbers are incredibly low.

00:03:17.880 They started quite well, and so he's got to aggressively define his presidency.

00:03:29.800 He's doing it through this legislation.

00:03:32.840 He's also there needs to be a feeling that he's in charge.

00:03:38.660 I've written books about 10 presidents going back to Nixon.

00:03:43.740 And I think the one common thing I, from the sidelines, observe is a president needs to realize they have been elected to do something and that they need to define that in simple, direct terms and do that.

00:04:07.500 And you can't kind of be wobbly about it, or you can't change the plan in the middle.

00:04:15.320 And certainly Biden has added in many, many programs.

00:04:21.940 He said he was going to do this, but I think the polling shows, and I think this is quite true, there's not the kind of clarity.

00:04:33.740 Presidents need to be clear.

00:04:37.360 When Ronald Reagan was president, whether you liked him or didn't like him, he said, I want to do three things.

00:04:45.320 Cut taxes, increase defense spending, and cut the size of the government.

00:04:50.680 Everything he did was related to those three goals.

00:04:54.880 He did actually cut taxes, increase defense spending.

00:04:59.540 He failed miserably to cut the size of the government.

00:05:03.780 I think no one is ever going to succeed at that.

00:05:07.160 I guess perhaps part of the challenge is that a lot of people just said, we want Donald Trump out of office.

00:05:12.080 And then the challenge for Joe Biden is he says, okay, well, I'm not Donald Trump, pick me.

00:05:16.240 But then as you're saying, well, what is the offer on hand?

00:05:19.460 What are the top three, top five things he's going to do?

00:05:21.760 And one wonders how many people were voting him in to give him those specific mandates, how many were saying, well, we just want Trump out.

00:05:29.420 And then does that present a challenge for Joe Biden right now?

00:05:32.600 Well, I think that's true.

00:05:34.540 And Biden himself has said publicly maybe his biggest achievement was getting Trump out, which he did.

00:05:42.780 He got him out of the presidency, but in 2024, I think we're, and in the years before then, we're going to see reemergence of a Trump campaign, perhaps in a very dramatic way.

00:06:00.220 So one of the other things you learn from writing books and doing newspaper stories on 10 presidents, as Ken Burns, the documentarian, said to me, my God, that's more than a large percentage of the presidents that we've had.

00:06:23.980 It's more than 20 percent of the presidents, and you can see how difficult the job is.

00:06:32.940 You need to understand that the process of communicating with the public is a central feature of that.

00:06:42.840 And if you project uncertainty or ambiguity or contradiction, it's going to make the job much, much harder.

00:06:52.720 I want to pick up on 2024, your allusion to the possibility that Donald Trump could be the Republican presidential candidate.

00:07:00.480 What is the likelihood of that?

00:07:03.420 It's there.

00:07:04.940 It's possible.

00:07:05.860 What I think there's a big burden on the media to look at the Biden presidency with clarity and, if necessary, skepticism, and the same thing with the Trump possible candidacy.

00:07:26.000 His, you know, we talk about in politics, and you do in Canada also, what's the rationale for the candidacy?

00:07:35.100 Why is so-and-so running?

00:07:36.840 And Trump's main rationale is his claim that the election last year, 2020, was stolen.

00:07:47.440 It's a little flabbergasting, I think, to lots of people to think that that's going to be enough, that people will go vote for him again in 2024.

00:07:59.160 So we'll see, and there's a lot of uncertainty, but Bob Costa and I spent a lot of time looking at what's the evidence that the election was stolen.

00:08:14.160 And we found documentation that was presented to Republican Trump supporters in the United States Senate, alleging that election was stolen.

00:08:28.980 And those Republican senators, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Senator Mike Lee of Utah, investigated as Trump supporters, and they found no evidence, not even a wisp of evidence.

00:08:46.480 So imagine, and, you know, I put out my phone number and my email in the United States, I say, if you have really good evidence that something was stolen or something was rigged in the election last year, contact me, and I haven't heard from anyone.

00:09:09.440 So let's say Donald Trump drops those grievances and moves more towards, OK, I've got to have that positive campaign moving forward.

00:09:15.440 Some of the things that he originally campaigned on, talking about building the wall, the border crisis, well, we see there is a surge on challenges in the border.

00:09:23.360 When it comes to dealing with China, they've ratcheted up the tough talk when it comes to potentially threatening war over Taiwan.

00:09:30.120 Is the international scene in some way moving towards favorability for people to swing back to Donald Trump?

00:09:37.400 Well, I don't think so, because all he talks about, I mean, yes, he talks about some of these other things, but he just says the election was rigged.

00:09:50.800 It was stolen.

00:09:53.400 Do people want somebody as president who has this provable illusion, this provable untruth?

00:10:04.860 I'm not sure they do, but we'll see.

00:10:09.420 You know, it's a long time.

00:10:12.200 How's Biden going to do?

00:10:14.180 What is Trump up to?

00:10:17.180 There's going to be a daily story, of course, on the president, on Biden.

00:10:24.980 And there is a regular story, periodic story on Trump.

00:10:30.200 He's there.

00:10:30.880 He's giving these rallies.

00:10:33.280 And people are not tuning into these rallies.

00:10:37.100 And he will say a lot of stuff that's unsupported.

00:10:41.760 But then he will be going to be very direct with you.

00:10:46.740 He will sound like Winston Churchill.

00:10:48.740 He will say, I will never give up.

00:10:51.500 I will keep fighting.

00:10:52.760 I will, you know, this is, no one's going to push me around.

00:10:57.240 I am.

00:10:58.560 And it is motivational, to say the least, to his base.

00:11:06.880 And according to the polling, tens of millions of people.

00:11:10.820 So this is going to go on, the march goes on, and it's going to be covered, I hope, not blindly, just by one-sentence lines on social media, by detractors of Trump or proponents of Trump.

00:11:31.380 We will dig into that continuing question, who is he?

00:11:38.100 What's he up to?

00:11:39.820 Why is he doing this?

00:11:42.180 What's the engine of his candidacy?

00:11:47.100 Bob, before we move away from Donald Trump, when you say provable untruth, I imagine there are a few people out there who are looking at what's going on with the Steele dossier right now.

00:11:57.320 The fact that a second person has been charged in relation to this special counsel investigation, looking at the origins of the Steele dossier, who would say a provable untruth is what we have found the Russian collusion conversation and allegations to be.

00:12:12.280 How do you think about that story happening, unfolding right now? 0.88

00:12:16.100 Well, back before the 2016 election, I looked at the Steele dossier, talked to some people about it, and on Fox News, of all things, I said it is a garbage document.

00:12:32.400 It is a document that makes allegations and then says, well, anyone who might be able to attest to these allegations has been bought off or is dead.

00:12:48.200 Well, as you know, as a reporter, if somebody tells you, well, here's allegation A and B, which was in the Steele dossier about Trump, but by the way, you're never going to find out if it's true because everyone's been bought off or is dead.

00:13:07.540 You look at that and you look at that and you say, wait a minute, this supposedly was written by an experienced intelligence officer.

00:13:16.840 No experienced intelligence officer would present that as, at least on the surface, credible, because it's not.

00:13:28.640 It is, as an intelligence officer, you make declarations and then you give some backup of who knows this or where it might have come from. 0.99

00:13:42.480 And so it was garbage. 1.00

00:13:46.840 It's now coming out that it's garbage. 1.00

00:13:50.980 And this, when I said so, Trump actually sent me a tweet saying, thank you. 0.97

00:13:59.920 I was not doing it to please him.

00:14:02.960 I was doing it as a reporter looking at the facts.

00:14:09.440 And so, you know, again, it was something driven by seeming evidence.

00:14:19.660 It needed to be looked at, but it went on way too long.

00:14:24.100 And the special investigation done by the former FBI director, Robert Mueller, was deeply flawed, should have been quicker.

00:14:36.200 And so we got bogged down in this whole thing.

00:14:42.880 And, you know, it's too bad.

00:14:46.300 We waste time on nonsense.

00:14:49.200 Republicans are very hopeful of the results that they've seen happen in Virginia, flipping from Democrats to being more in their favor.

00:14:55.620 Things in New Jersey were a little close.

00:14:57.340 And there's, of course, that one candidate, the state senator, who was a longstanding Democrat and a New Jersey truck driver who only spent 150 or so dollars on his campaign.

00:15:07.320 He managed to unseat that individual.

00:15:09.260 Some nervousness for Democrats.

00:15:10.780 Obviously, a lot of hope for Republicans.

00:15:12.540 Should we make much of this?

00:15:13.740 Is this a sign of what's to come in the midterms?

00:15:16.560 Well, you can't tell.

00:15:17.940 I mean, things happen that are aberrations, but this may reflect something.

00:15:26.020 Right after, two days after that election, I went down to Richmond, Virginia, the capital, for a funeral of an uncle of mine who died at age 96.

00:15:39.260 And lots of my relatives down there are, I think, all of them voted for the Republican Youngkin.

00:15:49.440 And at the same time, I found they were not supporters of Trump.

00:15:55.520 They, that Youngkin has found a way to be somewhat less emotional, not insult Trump, but not fully embrace him.

00:16:10.660 And, you know, maybe there's a middle ground like this for Republicans.

00:16:15.700 But this is 2021, and the next off-year election is 2022.

00:16:23.960 It's a year away, and anything can happen.

00:16:28.200 I got to ask you about Canadian politics for a moment.

00:16:30.800 Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was really adored around the world when he first came into office, and things have been a bit more difficult for him here.

00:16:37.580 He has been re-elected twice, but each time he's sort of gotten a fewer count, and he went from a majority government to a minority government.

00:16:43.920 How would you say the U.S., broadly, whether it's the Washington establishment or just regular folks, how do they view Justin Trudeau right now?

00:16:52.240 Well, I don't have any special knowledge on that, and I try to be empirical as a reporter.

00:16:59.560 I mean, I followed what's happened about him.

00:17:03.100 What does he say?

00:17:04.660 What's his account for what's happened to him?

00:17:10.800 Briefly, can you tell me?

00:17:12.180 Oh, boy.

00:17:13.000 Well, you know, we have a pretty divisive landscape right now.

00:17:15.800 We've sort of started mimicking what's going on in America right now.

00:17:19.160 But it's pretty common for people to become prime minister with a minority count of the vote there, much less than 50%.

00:17:25.540 So in some ways, it's business as usual.

00:17:28.720 Yeah.

00:17:28.880 Well, you know, we in the United States and you in Canada live with the Internet, and the Internet has changed all discourse, including political discourse.

00:17:43.940 And the impatience and the speed of the Internet must drive you crazy doing these long-form podcasts where people will just come out and say one thing and a sentence or a phrase or a headline.

00:18:00.580 And it's not examined, it's not supported.

00:18:05.360 Well, you have that, too.

00:18:06.340 You'll go on television, and you'll have a 12-minute segment or what have you on a major network.

00:18:10.400 And then the clipping is Bob Woodward said this, and then it's like three words.

00:18:13.960 Yeah, exactly.

00:18:15.820 And so we know from our own educations that's not the way you learn.

00:18:23.000 And you learn by going in-depth into matters.

00:18:28.880 And I have the luxury of time as a journalist, still work at the Washington Post, but spend most of my time doing books.

00:18:39.700 And I think there's great value in in-depth reporting because you often discover surprises in peril.

00:18:51.800 Robert Costa and I found that there was a national security crisis that was completely secret.

00:18:58.200 We were on the brink of some sort of conflict or misunderstanding with China that we never knew about.

00:19:06.180 The chairman of the Joint Chiefs in the United States, who's the number one military officer, was so worried about Trump, he called in the staff in the Pentagon from the war room and said,

00:19:22.400 make sure that you don't take orders from Trump or the White House without involving him, General Milley, in the process.

00:19:31.920 The last time, the only other time that happened was 1974 with Nixon, evidence that Nixon was unstable and drinking and depressed.

00:19:44.340 And the Secretary of Defense at the time did exactly the same thing, made sure he was involved if there were any kind of military orders.

00:19:55.360 And when Costa and I discovered this first learned that we were flabbergasted.

00:20:02.900 I mean, there was no hint in public reporting at all that something like this was going on.

00:20:13.080 So what does this teach you?

00:20:15.180 You know, when you get up in the morning, you don't think about what you know, but you are plagued by what you don't know.

00:20:23.780 You know, we're told that Watergate was a bit of a sort of before the fall, after the fall moment,

00:20:29.340 in that previously people were able to see that their politicians, even if they didn't support their political party,

00:20:33.740 were still sort of decent people, more or less honest people.

00:20:36.760 And now that's just made so many people cynical.

00:20:39.280 I know that observation was made, it's already been made years ago.

00:20:42.480 Where are we at now in that situation, the sort of general cynicism and sometimes outright hostility we have towards those who seek public office?

00:20:50.620 Well, there should be cynicism, skepticism, not hostility.

00:20:58.000 I mean, what government does obviously makes a big difference in our lives.

00:21:02.480 Witness, when we have a war, it convulses the country.

00:21:07.380 When we have a government that's not functioning, people don't get what they need.

00:21:17.540 And government is a big part of everyone's life in either small or large ways.

00:21:26.320 So it ideally should run well.

00:21:31.120 But, you know, this environment of the Internet is, impatience and speed, as I say, is here to stay.

00:21:39.820 It's also, of course, changing the way the media landscape works.

00:21:43.640 We've got podcasts galore, some of the highest paid media personalities.

00:21:47.580 Individuals like Joe Rogan are not at all on traditional media, alternative media.

00:21:51.540 People are getting their information from such diverse sources.

00:21:55.180 Many of them are top-notch, well-credential individuals.

00:21:58.240 Some of them, I guess you can more ask, oh, you know, what's this source where they're getting their info from?

00:22:02.480 What do you think in terms of what this means for the health of the national discourse?

00:22:08.440 To your point, it's, you know, that genie's not going back in the bottle.

00:22:11.800 What does it mean moving forward?

00:22:14.260 Yes, well, again, some of the burdens on the media when we interview people, interview people on television.

00:22:22.820 We need politicians, when they make claims, we need to ask that basic question.

00:22:30.320 How do you know?

00:22:33.120 Why are you saying that?

00:22:36.020 What is the basis for your conclusion?

00:22:39.820 We can't just grab a soundbite.

00:22:42.680 We've got to go behind it.

00:22:46.160 And, you know, I like evidence-based reporting.

00:22:51.180 And when you're interviewing people, you have to ask them.

00:22:55.860 More and more, we're in open-source territory in terms of government posting documents online that previously would require a lot of people to search for.

00:23:04.500 You're getting real-time data, whatever it is, about the finances, about COVID-19 numbers.

00:23:09.360 Has this been empowering citizen journalism in a good way?

00:23:12.620 Or are there still concerns about traditional media being able to sort of filter through all of this stuff?

00:23:18.020 I mean, how are the traditional duties now being skewed or redefined?

00:23:24.020 What do you mean by citizen journalists?

00:23:26.980 Well, I mean, a lot of people just say, all right, I got the budget up on the website, and that's all I need to know.

00:23:31.340 No more intermediary.

00:23:32.400 Well, you know, you need to, again, provide the basis.

00:23:39.780 But I think this information is very useful about the pandemic.

00:23:47.880 You know, there's this feeling, at least in the United States, that, oh, the pandemic is subsiding.

00:23:54.540 Only 1,200 people die from it each day.

00:23:58.580 Over three days, that's as many people that died in the 9-11 terrorist attacks 20 years ago.

00:24:10.680 And that terrorist attack, 9-11, really changed the whole country in the United States to a certain extent.

00:24:20.920 It changed the world.

00:24:23.320 And so I think we've become a little bit, we've almost received some sort of forget pill.

00:24:37.340 Oh, let's forget this.

00:24:39.960 Well, you know, forget pills don't work very well in journalism.

00:24:45.260 And I think they hurt the functioning of government.

00:24:50.120 But, Bob, before we go, I got to ask you, what do you think of the phenomenon of calling everything gate?

00:24:54.960 You know, bridge gate and so-and-so.

00:24:56.800 As the guy behind Watergate, do you embrace that sort of naming frequency?

00:25:02.360 Or do you roll your eyes when you hear it?

00:25:04.500 Well, it's a cute idea.

00:25:07.980 Sometimes these things are real gates, real serious scandals or something that needs to be labeled gate.

00:25:18.840 But, you know, people will try and it just doesn't work sometimes.

00:25:26.120 People are not going to accept that there's, that this is a gate.

00:25:33.220 But it gets your attention, doesn't it?

00:25:39.060 If somebody calls you up and says, I'd like to come on your podcast and talk about, you know, wild wind gate.

00:25:52.700 What's wild wind gate?

00:25:54.940 Good question.

00:25:56.000 What about, do you still chat with Robert Redford?

00:25:58.520 Are you guys still pals?

00:25:59.320 Yeah, we visited him a couple of years ago at his home in Sundance and did a forum there.

00:26:09.400 And, you know, what he did in doing that movie was very brave because everyone said you can't make a movie about politics.

00:26:19.820 And he insisted.

00:26:22.020 He was behind it and really worked hard.

00:26:27.960 How do you know this?

00:26:29.660 Where did you get this?

00:26:31.640 Did a great job of putting a movie together.

00:26:38.740 I don't know that you've ever seen it.

00:26:40.880 That really conveys the nitty gritty and the scramble and the uncertainty and the lump in your stomach moments that happen when you're chasing a story, any story.

00:26:56.620 A fascinating movie, indeed.

00:26:58.980 And a fascinating career.

00:27:00.080 You've had great books.

00:27:01.300 What's the next book going to be, Bob?

00:27:03.500 I'm not sure.

00:27:05.340 If you've got an idea, play assignment editor.

00:27:09.040 All right.

00:27:09.620 Sounds good.

00:27:10.360 Bob Woodward, thanks very much.

00:27:12.140 Great chatting with you.

00:27:12.640 Thank you.

00:27:12.900 Full Comment is a post-media podcast.

00:27:15.960 I'm Anthony Fury.

00:27:17.060 This episode was produced by Andre Pru with theme music by Bryce Hall.

00:27:21.060 Kevin Libin is the executive producer.

00:27:23.540 You can subscribe to Full Comment on Apple Podcasts, Google, Spotify, and Amazon Music.

00:27:28.560 You can listen through the app or your Alexa-enabled devices.

00:27:31.380 You can help us by giving us a rating or a review and by telling your friends about us.

00:27:35.140 Thanks for listening.

00:27:35.800 Thank you.

Full Comment - November 15, 2021

Bob Woodward on ‘Question Man’ Biden and Trump 2024

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript