thbert: a legendary reporter shines a light otrump presidency. i'm robert costa. tonight, we welcome bob woodward to "washington week." a new book by pulitzerin prize winn reporter, bob woodward, depicts chaos ie the white house. thy are so many officials questioning presid trump's decisions on trade, national security, and the showdown with the special couel. is the trump administration on the brink of a nervous breakdown? we discuss the stakes for the president and the country, next. announcer: this is "washington week." funding is provided by -- newman's own foundation, donating all profits from newman's own food products to charity and nourishing the common good. koo and patricia yuen through

the yuen foundation, committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities. the ethics and excellence in journalism foundation.or the coion for public broadcasting, and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. once aga, from washington, moderator, robert costa. robert:good evening. tonight, a special edition our program. bob woodward, the pulitzer prize winning reporter for the washington "post" joins us for a conversation about his new book, "fear: trump in the white house." bob traces donald trump's journey from the campaign trail to 1600 pennsylvani avenue. bob, so glad to have you here. bob: thank you. robert: speaking of pennsylvania avenue, i think back to our conversation with then candidate trumpn march -- bob: 2 1/2 years ago. and we s in that little

restaurant before going to his hotel, which was then undergoing renovation. robert: and do you remember what he tolds? you told me then, bob, that we need to find out p hsident trump sees power. you said that's the core of a presidency, how they use power. so what have you learned? bob: yes -- so much. but to go back to that moment, wee talking about power and what we did -- obama, of course, was the incumbent. so you and i went back and looked at some obama statements. his first inaugural, he said, oh, being pnt is about restraint and humility. and real power is not having to use violence. so we asked trump, you know, what about power? and that's when he said, real power is, i don't even like to use the word, fear.

and it was this moment. i kind of jumped in my chair. i think you did, too, that this is the clue. robert: how does he use that power? is there an ideology that's his?ing or is it all about transactional politics? bob: it's all about pragmatic moments, the application of ideas that he's had going back often 30 years ago about national security, about the presidency, about trade. iean, you name -- about north korea, about the north american free trade agreement, about europe. and what i've tried to do is say, ok, what does he do in each of these cases? but there's a linewe b our discussion before going to see trump and then talki to trump. and the presidency is also about

an obligation the peopleho put you there, but not just the ones who elected you. and i always think the job of the president is to establish the next stage of good for a majority of people in the country, not a base,ot one party, not interest groups. and this is one of the things he has not done. robert: what drives those views, though? you talk about 30 years, andn the book, president trump tells gary cohn, his forme economic adviser, i've had these views for 30 years. why does he have those views? bob: he doesn't answer. it's just that's the way it is me,if you disagree with according to trump, you're wrong. so you can't -- we all have to grow. presidents have to grow. and the ability to listen and change or modify little bit, is the core of

surviving the presidency. and there is, as i say, this nervous breakdown. and i think it manifests itself in everything. you live in trump-world, covering it. what surprised you the most in thisook? robert: what surprised me was the effort that'seing made so many people around him to bring him back into the mainstream, back towards certain norms. you see that in the sne you detail at the pentagon, in the so-called tank at the pentagon where they try to explain to him the traditional alliances ofol u.s. foreigny. he's pretty dismissive about it all. bob: he's insulting to people. here you have mattis, the secretary,f defen saying to him -- puts up on e wall these maps of kind of the pillars of the old order -- trade agreements, security agreements

like nato and then the very sensitive secret, top-secret, special access program intelligence partnerships. and trump doesn't buy into any of this. and they're all discouraged on the economic side. mnuchin tells mr. president, about china being anc cur manipulator, look, mr. president, they used to but they don't now, and the law is very clear, youak can't action unless they're doing it now and trump is just, declare it! as if you can rulbeyond the law. robert: that style, in terms of foreign policy,l has a r cost. you write about how the u.s. came to theri of a real dramatic situation with north korea. lee president was p back on tweeting about removing

dependence from south korea. bob: this cou -- and just at the time, top north korean leader sent a message through intermediaries to h.r. mcmaster, national security adviser, december 4 of last year, saying, if you start withdrawing dependence, we will take that as a signal that war isin it. you have a volatile leader, kim jong-un. he's g n theselear weapons. and there's no predictable path for understanding how he might respond. and the pentagon leadership wenu about this and just said -- the tweet never went out. but had it, you know, god knows. and this is the problem. you are crisis managing, that's what the presidency is about.

and you got to the have a team. you got to havegreement on fundamentals and they don't have it. robert: do the people around him who are taking documents off of his desk, different trade agreements the president is trying to rip up, do they seen themselves, wou talk to them, as heroes? or do they know theyin are a sense, mounting, as you call it, an administrative coup d'etat? bob: there is lots of conscience in this and the connection between trade and the military and the intelligence operations are very, very secret andhe are interwoven and people who did this are saying to each other, got to save the country. one of them saying, a third of my time is spent keeping bad things from happening. and so alarm bells are going off

all the time. robert: steve bannon, former chief strategist to the president, has called it an in-your-face state, the group of people around theyiresident to corral him in a different direction, not necessarily a deep state. how do you see that effort? bob: trump will just do what he wants and he'll listen up to a point and then he'll dismiss -- like steel tariffs. if you took 1,000 economists and say, do steel tariffs make sense? and i quote a i documentthe book where experts on the left, the right, theno ests, nobel prize winners, alan greenspan, ben bernanke,ra leading demc and republica economists, send him a letter s'ting, d do this. this will not work. and, ofourse, he does it, and calls in the steel executives.

even john kelly, the chief of staff, didn't know there was going to be this meeting. and trump just does it. under the law, he has that authority. some people think he may be stretching it. but now we are in the world of these trade wars which he says he thinks he can win. wow. danger, danger. i mean, the fright that people feel. there's one point where tom bossert, his cybersecurityo chief --ne has talked about this. but he goes to see trump. he's going to go on television on a sunday show and trump says, tell them i'm putting tariffs up to $500 billion on china. now, this was four or five

months ago. of course, that's exactly where he's heading. an the president's so so pumped up about this, he says, you know, boy, it's too bad it's a sunday show because if it were monday and the markets were open, you'd tank the markets. the president's job is not to tank the market.o it's t stabilize the markets. i was really surprised by that, that he would -- because hte sp all this time in new york, understands finance a way. in a way he n does. but to speak proudly of tanking the markets, potentially. what the did you think? you live trump day to day. opportunity to spend so much time talking to these key player iide, talking to you ea deep background, revealing

what'sy happening. what have you learned about president trump as a person? youwsay he k the markets. what else does he know? h bo doesn't know some of the markets. he knows they're out there but he thinks things like, let's just print money, run the presses. they're telling him, no, you can't dt, t you'll run up the deficit. as you know, economists on thele and the r, republicans and democrats, are rlly worried about the deficit spending. but it's just, let's do it, let's print money.cr robert: ary jim mattis in the defense department, chief of staff, john kelly, are they getting toot much cre for keeping president trump in line? because he still seems to be going his own way on every front. bob: that's a rea question.ting where's the credit? i think it happens at lots of levels. there are some people who've read the book who say you know,e hasn't started a war. which is quite true.

he's talked about let's assassinate or let's go after, let's kill the syrian leader assad. he has -- someone was telling me today, hugh hewitt, said he wants t air-drop copies of the book to every embas in washington because this will tell you how he's working. it tel y a lot that's new but there is tysry of the trump personality which persists. robert: and the mystery of the republican party persists. dvisers andl these officials in the book trying to aing president trump in different direction. but where are the republican leaders? speaker ryan,eaajorityr mcconnell. they seem to barely figure in the effort to keep trump moving towardhe cente bob: that's exactly right. and, of course, this is -- a lot

of people have compared this to the nixon case, watergate, which i spent years of my life on. and at a certain point, it tipped, and the republicans said, barry goldwater, former late senator from arizona, finally went and said, too many lies, too many crimes. and nixon resigned the next day. where that t point is with trump, if there is one, we don't know. somebody who knows him well after the book came out g said, heng to lash out at you, which he's de. he is a master at changing the conversation, as you know. oid so we're to see efforts to change the conversation, which is fine. but it's -- the core thought i have, there's a war on truth.

and the book ends with john dowd, his lawyer for eight months in the mueller investigation. he won't tell in this, because it's too insulting, but he said, you're an f'ing liar. that's the summation. you can't run this complex country on untruth. robert: how much is that mueller investigation, the special counsel, looking into russian interference in the 2016 horing over the presidency fueling the anger? bob: immensely so. more so than i thought. there are a couple of scenes where trump asks dowd t goo mueller and say, you know, the president wants you to kw that the egyptian president, el-sissi, a real tyrant, called, and negotiated with trump about getting some charity worker

released from egypt. which happened. and then trump recount what el-sissi said, you know, and trump's telling dowd, this guy, r.-sissi, is a kil he's a real killer. he'll make you sweat on t phone. and then trump assumes the graveling voice of el-sissi, and says, donald, what about this investigation?at going on here? will you still be around? suppose i need aavor? robert: so he feels that kind of burden in operating foreign policy. can't escape it, can't escape the russia probe, day in, day out. bob: that's right. the day after mueller was appointed in lay oft year, there is a long extended scene in the oval office in the dining room whe trump is just beside himself, doesn't really sit down, is just on his feet back

and forth, tivo'ing all the cable news and looking at some of it and saying,ow has this happened? he realizedal theity of having a special counsel and he said, mueller is going to go into every phase of my life. i am -- i mean, he fee and sounds like he's been tied up by this. robert: you think about what happened on friday. earlier today, paul manafort, trump's former campaign chairman,eces to plead guilty to money laundering, cooperating with mueller's investigation. it doesn't s bob: it doesn't. you would know more about this. would manafortnow much? i think he was just brought in to manage the campaign for a short peod of time for the republican national convention. do you think he knows --rt

rohe's connected. he was the chairman of the trump campaign. my point is that every day president trump, whether in a conversation a world leader or with his staff, he's haunted, in a sense, by t russia investigation. bob: he definitely is. and here's an interesting question for our business, the how do we cover a himressively but fairly? because there are lots of people, his supporters,ho think we've adopted a tone of snideness. how do you gethat? robert: how do you do it? bob: how do you do it? robert: you think about the trump voter, whenever you mee them on the campaign trail, they say the economy's strg, they ke the nominees for the supreme court, they think president trump's doing fine. there's a disconnect in the country, parts of the country. those who are alarmedy president trump and those who say he's doing just fine. bob: i think the answer, as

always is, you and i have talked over the last couple of years, more reporting. what really happened. what did they say, what was the final resolution of some of o these thingr at least the temporary resolution. because often tre isn't final one. robert: how does the president see race? there's an episode in the bookou charlottesville. he calls his speech where he apologizesor his initial remarks and backtracks them the worst mistake of his presidency. aboute says charlottesville that both sides are responsible and there is an eruptionf, wait a minute, you're saying nazis are fine? so then rob porter, staff secretary and sarah sanders work with him on a speech, which he gives, which is a healing speech

on sunday. but if you look at that, if you ran it, you would see, it's ki of like a hostage tape, saying things hsne d necessarily believe, but he said them. and then he watches a little fox news and pple are saying, it's a course correion. and he blows up and says that's the worst f'ing speech ever gave, how could i do that? who talked me into it? and the next monday, he reverts to his original position in a very stark way. bert: does that tell us about how he sees race? or does that just tell us how president trump never wants to be on the defensive? bob: i can't answer that question. all i can do i show it. ple.see the reaction to p what it suggests to a number is that it means the war, the race war in this country, will never

end, unless you have a president who's going to sakeps to heal. and i was really shocked at that. i thought, for a few words, you create such nervousness that you crow fuel on this racial discord in thentry. it's out of the mainstream. and i think you have to look at every day, like this is w t the people in the white house look at it, which is, whongnows what's g to happen. the tweets, they start the day. you know this. reading the tweets. robert: he's i upstairs alo the executive residence of the white house tweeting b himself. when you think of all the challenges you've laid out here, bob, in the book, in your reporting. are the challenges surrounding

president trump different, in a theerent class, than challenges you've encountered with the nine other presidents you've observed? bob: this is unique because it is -- there'sot an operating theory, there's building.am i keep going back to, you've got to have a team. it's like here s on yourw. you have a team. i've met all your producers.w i k they do all the work, not you. robert: very true. bob: at "the washington post, m.u have a team. you need a t and collaboration is the only way you get to solut leader has to listen and i think the listening skills of a leader are among the most important and he just doesn't want to listen. he wants to talk and he wants to -- it's -- it's a very

troubling time.an people who want to pretend it's not tro aling kidding themselves. robert: are the institution-- congress, the federal agencies, the norms in thisreountry, they holding? bob: it could be tested. and this is when you have -- when there's a real crisis. how do you -- --cuse m how does he make his decision in a way that, well, take from his disruptor instincts and the tions thate insti have been handed him. when people say "it's not normal," of course it's not normal. he won on not being normal. normal butave to be kiu have to be -- you can't go around -- i was t to some of the bbc people today. and my god, i you know, europe,

they're just saying, what is going on? this book is the best seller in europe. imagine that. that just doesn't happen. that's because people wonde where this all ends. robert: whether it's in europe, inside the white house, even now, in 2018, there's a mass effort to try tonderstand president trump, again and again, people are asking the question, who i he. bob: and unfortunately, his lawyer, john dowd, gets the closing comment in this book and that is, that he's an f'ing liar. and this theme, our newspaper, ,200 and so many lies or distortions, that's important. i think most important is what he does on national security. that's where you can make a mistake, where you have to have

the secretary of defense tell you we' doing all these things to prevent world war iii, job one for a president. then you have the beleaguered trump, in the mueller probe, which he just, as john dowd says, you know, he's really disabled. he can't telthe truth. robert: bob woodward, thank you so much for your reporting, your insights, now, and for the past four decades. appreciate your time. thanks for being here. our conversation will continue on thek washington wtra." you can find this week's special edition right now and all weekend long at org/washingtonweek. to everyone affected by hurricane frence, please be safe. we are thinking of you. i'm robert costa. thanks for joining us. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy.

visit ncicap.org.] announcer: funding for "washington week" is provided by --'s newmwn foundation, donating all profits from newman's own's food products tot chand nourishing the common good. the ethics and excellencsmin journaoundation. koo and patricia yuen throughyu th foundation, committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities. the corporation for public broadcasting, and by contributions your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you.

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