Woodward doubts President Trump will learn from his errors

By Scott Benjamin

HARTFORD – Bob Woodward, who has written best-sellers on Nixon’s Watergate to the Clinton economic plan to W. Bush’s wars on terror to Obama’s stimulus package, says he’s concerned that “everything” President Donald Trump “does is a gamble.”

Woodward, who already has had 12 number-one best-sellers, recently wrote “Fear: Trump in the White House” (Simon & Schuster, 420 pages. $30), which has already sold 1.1 million copies.

It generated considerable attention for reporting that documents related to a South Korean trade agreement were taken off the president’s desk so he wouldn’t be able to sign them and that his chief of staff, John Kelly, has referred to him as “an idiot.”

Former New York Times Executive Editor Jill Abramson wrote in a Washington Post review that “Fear” ‘raises serious questions about the president’s basic fitness for the office.’

However an October NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found that Trump’s approval rating entering the midterm congressional elections was slightly higher than that for former Democratic President Barack Obama, Trump’s immediate predecessor, in the fall 2010.

Fall 2010 was Obama’s low point and shortly before leaving office in January 2017 an ABC News-Washington Post poll showed that he had an impressive 60 percent approval rating.

Bill Curry of Farmington, the former two-time Democratic gubernatorial nominee, told Brookfield Patch.com last April – in an effort to put the current national politics in perspective – “What does it say for the Democrats that we’re so bad that we couldn’t win an election against Donald Trump?”

Curry worked as a domestic affairs advisor for two years for former President Bill Clinton.

“We should have the highest expectations for our presidents,” Woodward said on Thursday night, November 1, during a 90-minute interview at the Bushnell Performing Arts Center.

For Woodward, a 1965 graduate of Yale University in New Haven, his reporting was similar to the leg work that he and former Washington Post colleague Carl Bernstein did 46 years ago to uncover Watergate.

He said that he often met with sources late at night in their homes.

Woodward, who was interviewed on stage by WNPR afternoon host Colin McEnroe, said one source complained about an 11 p.m. phone call.

Woodward said when he told him he was only four minutes away, the source asked, “How do you know where I live?”

Woodward replied, “That’s the easy part.”

He said some sources were initially reluctant to do audio-recoded interviews, even though they would be quoted anonymously in the book. However, a short time later they were providing written notes and boxes of White House memorabilia.

Abramson wrote in the review that Woodward engages in “meticulous reporting” and does “compulsively thorough interviews.”

She added that a review on his book “The Price of Politics” on former Obama’s economic program stated that Woodward’s writing is the “literary equivalent of C-SPAN3.”

Woodward said he hopes that Trump would learn from the material in “Fear,” which reports that the president’s national security team has been surprised by his lack of knowledge on world affairs and that he had told Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin that he would appoint him to that position and then during a meeting with former Goldman Sachs executive Gary Cohn offered him the treasury post in front of Mnuchin.

Cohn became the director of the National Economic Council, a position now held by former CNBC commentator Larry Kudlow, who lives in Redding.

“I don’t think he will learn from what happened,” said Woodward. “That is not Trump’s style. He listens to himself and he is very isolated.”

He said, for example, the president is “indifferent” to the budget deficit, which has grown 17 percent since he took office, largely because of his massive tax reform package that was signed late last year.

Woodward said that “there can be documented information that this is the best policy choice and Trump will reject it, saying that he has had a different belief for the last 30 years, even though there is any scientific evidence to support it.”

Some sources in statements through the White House press office have denied some of the reporting provided in “Fear.” However, Woodward said he hasn’t received a phone call from any of them claiming that they were misquoted.

Woodward said his wife, Elsa Walsh, an author and former Washington Post reporter, was very “committed” to the project, editing the manuscript six times and never complaining that Woodward’s relentless reporting was detracting from their activities.

The scope of Woodward’s career was visible in the lobby of the Bushnell, where not only were they selling copies of “Fear” but some of his other entries – such as the 1974 “All The President’s Men,” which included his late night parking garage interviews with Deep Throat; the 1984 “Wired” on the career of comedian John Belushi, who had a body guard to protect him from himself, including hitting him in a bathroom so that he wouldn’t use cocaine; and “Veil,” his investigation into the Central Intelligence Agency, which included a hospital deathbed interview from former CIA Director William Casey to confirm some information.

Woodward has been portrayed in a small handful of movies. He said his favorite portrayal was by Robert Redford in the 1976 adaptation of “All The President’s Men.”

Woodward said he had some blind dates after the movie was in the theaters .

“Some of those women were disappointed when they opened the door and saw me for the first time,” he said.

Woodward said that some people were confused as to why the late actor, Jason Robards, a former Connecticut resident, kept saying, “Where is the story?” as he portrayed Washington Post Executive Editor Ben Bradlee in “All The President’s Men.”

“That’s what executive editors say,” Woodward related. “Robards showed that he could say it 15 different ways, which is why he won an Academy Award” for best supporting actor.