A recording from a new audiobook by Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward reveals that former President Donald Trump gave the journalist copies of letters from North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
“Nobody else has them, but I want you to treat them with respect,” Mr Trump says on the recording. “And don’t say I gave them to you, okay?”
Mr Woodward, the legendary journalist who helped break the Watergate story in the 1970s and has continued to cover the White House and major news in Washington since, is releasing an audiobook featuring eight hours of his interviews with Mr Trump on 25 October.
CNN obtained an advance copy of the audiobook, which includes commentary from Mr Woodward. The conversations between Mr Trump and Mr Woodward published in the audiobook touch on a wide range of topics, including Mr Trump’s relationship with the North Korean leader.
The interviews were largely recorded for Mr Woodward’s second book about Mr Trump, entitled “Rage.” Among the revelations from that book was that Mr Trump knew as early as the beginning of February that Covid-19 was “deadly,” even as he downplayed the severity of the virus publicly and continued to do so even after the US was locked down in an attempt to prevent the virus from spreading.
Other topics discussed in the interviews include Mr Trump’s relationship with foreign leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his views on the US nuclear arsenal.
Mr Woodward has described Mr Trump as profane, reactionary, and boastful.
“I get, I get people,” Mr Trump told Mr Woodward in an interview shortly after the police murder of George Floyd when the country was embroiled in historic racial justice protests. “They come up with ideas. But the ideas are mine, Bob. The ideas are mine. Want to know something? Everything is mine. You know, everything. Every part of it.”
In another interview, Mr Trump described his preference for authoritarian strongmen over democratically-elected leaders who he considered “easy.”
“It’s funny, the relationships I have, the tougher and meaner they are, the better I get along with them. You know?” Mr Trump said. “Explain that to me someday, okay. But maybe it’s not a bad thing. The easy ones are the ones I maybe don’t like as much or don’t get along with as much.”
Mr Trump, who is under a federal investigation for his handling of classified documents and is being subpoenaed to testify before the Jan 6 committee investigating the Capitol riot he is accused of inciting, is reportedly weighing another White House run in 2024.
It is unclear as of yet just how his myriad legal troubles and his attempts to subvert US democracy and remain in power after losing the 2020 presidential election will affect his political standing. Mr Trump has been an active force in Republican politics since leaving the White House, boosting an array of far right candidates in this election cycle — a number of whom supported his attempts to overturn the result of the last presidential election.
