Analysis: Why Bob Woodward Broke A Career-long Tradition In 'Rage'

Pelley: It would disappoint a few of your followers that you just attain an editorial conclusion on the finish of this ebook, one thing that reporters are usually not speculated to do.

Woodward: Sure. I say the President is the mistaken man for the job.

Pelley: However, you are often known as the reporter who would not put his thumb on the dimensions. And but, on the finish of this ebook, you just do that.

Woodward: It is a conclusion based mostly on proof, overwhelming proof, that he couldn’t rise to the event with the virus and inform the reality. And one of many issues that President Trump informed me, ‘Within the presidency, there’s at all times dynamite behind the door.’ The true dynamite is President Trump. He’s the dynamite.

Pelley is correct that Woodward has constructed a status — over his work breaking Watergate in addition to his newer book-length chronicles of presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama — as the last word goal observer. Woodward’s means to achieve such shut — and prolonged — entry to essentially the most highly effective politicians in America relies on the concept he’s a fly on the wall; he stories, you resolve (or one thing).

That Woodward broke with that longstanding custom on this ebook is a very large deal. And one we must always look at extra carefully.

Woodward informed Pelley that he got here to the conclusion that the President “is the mistaken man for the job” due to “overwhelming proof that he couldn’t rise to the event with the virus and inform the reality.”

The virus in query is Covid-19, which has sickened greater than 6.5 million People and killed 194,000 — the best totals, on each fronts, of any nation on this planet. As Woodward paperwork in his ebook, Trump knew that the virus was worse than he was publicly letting on as early as January. And in March, the President told Woodward that he “needed to at all times play [the threat posed by the coronavirus] down” and “nonetheless like[d] enjoying it down, as a result of I do not wish to create a panic.”

As lately as Sunday evening, Trump was nonetheless seemingly in denial in regards to the ongoing menace posed by Covid-19 — holding a large indoor campaign rally in Nevada in direct defiance of the state’s guidelines in opposition to indoor gatherings of greater than 50 individuals. (Nevada Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak blasted Trump’s choice to carry the occasion as “reckless and egocentric.”)

All of which brings me to the actual level right here: Details are usually not a partisan place.

It’s a FACT, for instance, that masks are among the best (and solely) weapons we have now in opposition to the unfold of the coronavirus. President Trump has repeatedly attempted to undermine mask-wearing and refused, with only a few exceptions, to be photographed wearing one.

It’s a FACT that ingesting disinfectants or taking hydroxychloroquine are usually not scientifically sound measures to deal with the coronavirus. Trump has speculated publicly about disinfectants and pushed, time and time once more, hydroxychloroquine as a attainable remedy.

It’s a FACT that enormous indoor gatherings have, up to now, proven the potential to be super-spreader occasions for Covid-19. And but, Trump held his occasion Sunday evening in Nevada.

It’s a FACT that social distancing — six toes of distance between people — may help restrict the unfold of the virus. On Sunday evening in addition to on quite a lot of different events, together with his acceptance speech on the ultimate evening of the Republican Nationwide Conference late final month, Trump has held occasions by which attendees are packed cheek to jowl.

Saying that Trump doesn’t adhere to — and even acknowledge — recognized details a few virus that’s projected to kill, in response to one mannequin, more than 400,000 Americans by January 1, 2021, shouldn’t be Woodward taking some type of ideological place. It is him doing what he has executed all through his profession: Gathering details and following them the place they lead.

On this case, the details lead Woodward to a conclusion that’s each inevitable and terrifying: The individual tasked with main our nation via the best public well being disaster in a century “is the mistaken man for the job.”

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