As with every exposé thus far on President Trump, be it a book, a behind-the-scenes look at internal communications, or the media feeding frenzy sparked by revelations that Omarosa had recorded nearly every interaction she ever had in the West Wing, the new book by legendary Washington Post reporter and editor Bob Woodward has been a treasure trove of never-before-seen memos, interactions, and unvarnished outbursts from the White House.
But Woodward, trading on his 45-plus year legacy as one half of the journalistic team that brought down Richard Nixon, surely has his 13th number one best seller on his hands, as he was able to record hundreds of hours of carefully transcribed interviews with current and former officials, aides, insiders, confidantes, and even Donald Trump’s former lawyer, John Dowd.
It was this last subject that was the focus of perhaps one of the most explosive revelations from the book, which was excerpted in the Washington Post on Tuesday.
According to Woodward’s account, a conversation between Trump and Dowd regarding a possible sit-down interview for the President with special investigator Robert Mueller turned into a disagreement over whether to go through with it — with Trump insisting that he would be a “real good witness” in his own defense, while Dowd took the opposite view:
Don’t testify. It’s either that or an orange jumpsuit. You are not a good witness. Mr. President, I’m afraid I just can’t help you.”
Dowd resigned from the job the following day.
In response to the claims made in the book and in the excerpts provided to the Post, Trump gave a statement to right-wing blog site “The Daily Caller” (with apologies, we do not link explicitly partisan sources) that said Woodward has “a lot of credibility problems.” That would certainly be news to Woodward’s decades of loyal readers, and even too Woodward himself, who the President said had “always been fair” in a recorded phone call released by the Post on Tuesday as well.
Additionally, the White House issued a statement delivered by Sarah Huckabee Sanders:
This book is nothing more than fabricated stories, many by former disgruntled employees, told to make the President look bad. While it is not always pretty, and rare that the press actually covers it, President Trump has broken through the bureaucratic process to deliver unprecedented successes for the American people.”
Will Trump’s new lawyers follow the same advice that Dowd laid out for the President before high-tailing it out of the White House? One can never tell with Rudy Giuliani, who seems to say whatever comes into his head at any given moment.
Featured image via screen capture
