Journalist who interviewed Trump 18 times in 2020 calls him 'wrong man' for job

A famed journalist who conducted 18 on-the-record interviews with Donald Trump this year for a new book this year called him ‘wrong man’ to be president.

Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward offered the withering assessment of Trump while discussing his new book Rage, and says it is based on ‘overwhelming evidence.’

Woodward has interviewed every surviving president while they were in office, but has always remained impartial and never publicly passed judgement on their fitness for office – until now. He told ABC’s 60 Minutes: ‘I say the president is the wrong man for the job. It’s a conclusion based on evidence.

‘Overwhelming evidence, that he could not rise to the occasion with the virus and tell the truth. And one of the things President Trump told me, and the presidency there’s always dynamite behind the door.

‘The real dynamite is President Trump. He is the dynamite’

An explosive excerpt from Woodward’s new book released last week revealed that Trump knew full-well how dangerous coronavirus was, but decided to play it down to try and avoid ‘panicking’ the American people.

Speaking about coronavirus to Woodward in February, Trump said: ‘You just breathe the air and that’s how it’s passed.

‘And so that’s a very tricky one. That’s a very delicate one. It’s also more deadly than even your strenuous flu. This is deadly stuff.’

He continued: ‘To be honest with you, I always wanted to play it down.’ ‘I still like playing it down. I didn’t want to cause a panic.’

Trump spent the whole of February saying Covid-19 was no more dangerous than a flu, and that it would ‘wash through’ the United States without causing much harm.

The virus has so-far infected 6.4million Americans and killed more than 194,000. Woodward and colleague Carl Bernstein famously brought down then-US President Richard Nixon in 1974 by exposing the Watergate scandal.

That saw Nixon resign after he was caught trying to cover up his administration’s involvement in a break-in to the rival Democrat party’s Washington DC headquarters.

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