robert: what the president knew and when he knew it. > i wanted to always play it robert: the president tells bob woodward that he knew the coronavirus was deadly and airborne in february. and sparks a firestorm. >> it's disgusting. >> he's waving a white flag. he didn't d a damn thing. think about it. >> it is the lates explosive book in this campaign season and comes amid a new whistleblower pay the price? next. announcer: this is "waweington ." funding is provided >> when the world gets complicated, a lot goes through your min with fidelity weah management a dedicated advor can tailor

advice and recommendations to your life.y that's fidel wealth investment. announcer: additional funding is provided by the estate of arnold adams and koo and patricia yuen through theatn foun committed to bridging cultural differences in oures communi the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to yr pbs station from l viewersike you. thank you. once again from washington, moderator, robert costa. robert: good evening. the title of bob woodward's new book" rag comes from an interview woodward and i conduct ed with the then-president donald trump. he said i do bringage out. i always had. himself.d how trump sees and the president's critics

raged this week when theyd lear what president trump told woodward about the coronavirus in february. will the president pay a political price with american voters? it's hard for any reporter to say. but this time there are tapes. >> you just breathe the air, that's how it's passed. and so that's a tricky one. one. a very delicate you know, even your strenuous you flus. this is deadly stuff. >>he psident told woodward on february 7th, that he fully understood the threat. but he said this just weeks late tore the american people. disappear. g to will disappear. and from our shores, you know it could you go worse before it gets better. it can maybe go away. we'll soo what happen -- we'll see what happens. >> and he toldha woodward he

played it down. >> i wanted to always play it down. i still want to play it down because i don't want to create panic. said the president lied to americans. >> the fact that the president knew, he had been saying for a long time, the whole thing was a hoax, his delay, denial and stortion of what was happening caused many deaths. >> but the president has dismissed the criticism. >> they wanted me t come out and scream, people are dying. we're dying.. no. we did it just the right way. we have to be cm. robert: joining us tonight are three of washington's top reporters. asma khalid, political correspondent for national public radio. ashley parker, white house reporter for "the washington d post." chael schmidt, washington correspondent for the "new york times" and author of "dona trump vs. the united states: inside the struggle to stop a

president." ashley, you've been reporting on recent days on the fallout o the woodward book. why does that february 7th remark matter by the president? what was he doing at that time? what was he not saying to the li american p >> the question is really what he wasn't doing and wha he wasn't saying, and it's a fascinating about 10-day window from -- which woodward recounts in his book from when robert o'brien goes into the ovalof ce and said the coronavirus is going to be the biggest nationalecurity crisis o your presidency to when trump tells bob woodward -- he conveys that he understands the severity. u heerstands that it is deadly. it is tricky. and that it is airborn in that period, he really does you not cvey that grim reality to the american public in words forer sta so they can begin preparing and figure out if they needks and if they have

members of their family with co-morbidities and what steps they should bero taking toct themselves, and if you look at how he spends that te, for instance, the night he gets that warning, he hol a rally in wild wood, new jersey that as end he gets on his plane coronavirus task force, airne forcend he flies down you to mar-a-lago where he spends both days of the weekend golfing. that sunday is super bowl sunday. and he hosts super bowl bas at mar-a-lago in west palm beach. and so you really see a president who in both action and words was not taking the steps you would expect a responsible leader to take t warn their citizens of a coming deadly pandemic. robert: m ashley referenced a conversation in late january of 2020. in your own book, you paint portrait of this president dealing with advisors during

crisis sometimes throng them, sometimes ignoring them. when you hear t woodward tapes and his reporting and compare notces in a sense, w does this all reveal about president trump and his use of power? michael: i they what it shows is that p thesident has been completely sort of unshackled here i the last two years of his presidency. had first two years, he the there that were containers. t trump had found a way t llow those folks out. and that left him in a place where he was even more free to do what he wanted. and he didn't someone like kelly there who was running the day-to-dra oons in the white house like the general that he was. and what t shows, you see this in his decision to d sn with woodward and talk to oodward in his approach to the everything. the president still doesn't seem

to understand the consequences of differe things in washington. he thought he could charm woodward and that talking to h would be beneficial to himself. at times it looks like he thout he could talk the coronavirus away from the american people and downplayt. and that things would be better. here we are c eing to the of the fourth year of his presidency and it doesn't seem like the president has evolved much. robert: asma, you've done a lot of reporting for national public radio about voting in key states. you've focused on independent voters who may be tracking thet presid conduct on the pandemic. we've had so many controversies during the trump presidency. does this break through with those voters in those states? >> you know, honestly, i think that i the key question that we're going to be following up on in the weeks ahead. what i will say is that, you know, you cank at the tracking polls of how the president has handled the

coronavirus pandemic, and what i'm struck by is you can go back to a point and e sayly april approval rating -- he's now, you know, viewed as i believe i checked it earlier today less than 40% of the publiceliefs that he's handling the pandemic correctly. and when y a look where those numbers have dropped off, they've dropped o among democrats and independents. i have been texting with a bunch of voters that i met earlier on this summer in some of these key battleground counties. one gentleman i talked to earlier today i thought what was interesting, he is a republica but he messaged me back and said i feel less con in voting for trump today than when we spoke earlier thi summer. he's really not sure what to do. he is very nervous that a vote for joe w bidenld plummet the economy and is a small business owner. so that goes back to the

president's inability, though, to actually talk about an iss inhich he does have an apparent strength and that's the economy.mi the pan has not been a strength for him as we've seen for months and months. and that's what most voters are talkout right now. robert: what a snapshot of this campaign. all of us voters are doing our best to connect. ashley, you're also reporting on the trump presidency and the economy. and this week the senate g.o.p. failed to pass its so-called skinny bill, the coronavirus relief bill. as we stay on this pandemic topic, it's not just about the odward book, it's what washington will do. does the senate republican bill mean that president trump will step into the negotiations or are talks essentially dead between now and the election? asey: that's a gre question. and it's one even before senate republicans failed to pass this much more slimmed down version of a bill thateople were asked

-- putting to th fairly directly was that one of his selling points is that he claimed to be a deal maker and a businessman and one who is not ideological an who would getown and dirty and cut deals with the democrats. simply have not seen that in about the past year or so. some of that is the president sort of deep-seated anger and frustration towards speakerpe si for impeaching him frankly. and the president hasal bas said as much earlier this week last week that he doesn't and negotiate with chuck schumer and nancy pelosi. now, again, could that ce? potentially the president changes his mind sometimes based on the hour or on.he d but right now, the outlook for something getting through both chambers of congress is not particularly good right now. robert: asma, one of the

revealing moments f mas a reporter is watching vice president biden to folln up o ashley's point about the coronavirus relief. he respondedo briefly t the woodward book. but then he gave his full economic speech in michigan. what is b theen pitch now on the economy and what's their closing message at this point? my yeah, i will say, i think you were asking me about what t biden closing economic message is. is that right? robert: it is. correct. >> so in a nutshell what he's been emphasizing excite a bit has been this knead america vision. it might sound in some republican trump based voters is the make america great again policys that trump was promoting. but look, d it'sferent to some degree. it is a largely manufactured

basesolicy that h been focus on. you know, he was out there in michigan, a state the democrats lost in 2016 touting the need splr manufacture jobs but specifically policies whether it's a 10% tax f penalty companys that are off-shoring or whether it's a 10% tax credit, hes, for companies that brings some of this manufacturing back to the united states. what i'm struck is the degree that democrats, you know, this himself is talking about the need to off-shore manufacturing. and thiss a different economic conversation than democrats had been having in p somevious cycles. robert: mike, congress may be stalled when it comes to coronavirus negotiations, but they're investigating at least in the house this whistleblower complaint inside the department of homeland security, an c official iiming that he and others have been told to ignore russian interfere

election and focus on interference and activity by iran and china. and so i don'tor want tot that issue of interference. and what's the importance in your view as a reporter o this whistleblower report? michael: well, it's just anotheo example o either the intelligence community or the law enforcement world has been tilted in the president's direction. institutions mimic the people that run them. and the president has mad himself incredibly clear on what he tnks of russian interference what, he thinks of 2016 and how he doesn't think it's a problem here. you have tober and as i laid out in the book, 2016 was the grencest intelli failure since september 11, 2001. tand the federal governmas not taken nearly enough measures to have a different footing coming into another election. so not only are we at a similar or maybe even worse footing than

in 2016, but at the same time there are now accusations that the federal government, the o intelligence par the government is skewing the information it has to downplay that threat. so we're coming at it with e same, if not worst tools and disinformation with our own government about a potential disinformation campaig robert: when you step back from all of this that we're talking about, woodward and the pandemic, interference, a whistleblower report,t's clear we're covering a campaign thaht is t based on the latest polls and there is a national racial reckoning still unfolding alongside of it. here's a quick taste of the pitches from both of the ntenders. >> if biden wins, china wins. den wins the mobs win. and flag burners win. they want to delay the vaccine.

th want to desoy your suburbs. they want to erase yourorders and indoctrinate your children with poisono anti-american lies in our schools. not going to happen. >> he used that dog whistle on race, now, it's a bull horn. people don't want a hand out. they just want a fightingan . just give me a chance. robert: how is the bid campaign handling the drum bt from the president on the suburbs, his appeal to white voters? asma: they have certainly been out to suburban voters but you what i've been struck by by the biden company we were tking about the woodwd book. there are passages that get to how the president feels about black voters, about white privilege. those passages aren't what we'vg been hea about from the biden campaign. they're focused on the pandemic. biden feels like that's been a

dereliction ofuty. and so while i'll say that the president feels very comfortable in talking about racial issues and cultural issues however you want to define them, what i've been struck by i that the biden campaign does not want to engage on this dssue. bt. he went to kenosha. he's dealing with some of these is but by and large, i've been struck by how much they seem to want toenr the conversation consistent lip around- - consistently around the pandemic and how then' president h been handling it correctly. robert: with policing and violencen su you are bs, we're thinkingbout -- in the a suburb we're thinking about an october surprise. the president has been time-outing a possible vaccine. what have you learned in terms of an annouement or handling a vaccine in the comin weeks?

ashley: well, my reporting shows that the vaccine is the key thing that the president is focused on and has been focused on for a number of weeks when it comes to the coronavirus. he is laser-like focused on the vaccine and not much anything else. it's worth noting in fairness to therumped a minutes, operation warp speed is one of the few thgs that is going fairly well. a couple of vaccines are in phase three trials. it's proceeding along. and there is a belief that there may be a vaccine ready. he has said novemberst, that's two days before the election. he said maybe as early as october.there are public health officials in his administration who sayhere could be a vacci t ready b end of th year or early 2021. but it seems certain that whether or not there's literally an injectable intorms vaccine ready, the president is going to tease the promise of a vaccine

no matter what. one challenge that doctors and public health experts justg talk today are worried about is because of who the president is, because this is a president who misleads and obfuscates and frankly lies portion of the population who will not trust this vaccine, not the typical sliver of anti-vacksers but you a much. broader swath of the erican public who just doesn't trust vaccine trump in a rushing through. so that might be a little wrinkle in whatever surprise the president is trying to roll out robert: and mike, another possible october surprise is john durham's probe, the russian investation. an aide, an official within that investigation resned. this entire durham probe has a cloud of a possibly pressure

from the attorney general over it. what are you learning on this fluid story about when it's oing to be released, the going to be 's >> the president wants it to be released before election day. he wantsore than one indictment than the arrest ofb.n lawyer. he has said it privately and publicly. ss he's put the pe on his attorney general to do that. because the president and the torney genere talked so much about this investigation, there is a strong perception that there is some sort of there-there and that they're turning up some sort of bad information. the other problem with that though is thatt under mines the actual investigation because it shows that the people who are tharge of i are saying that there may be a predetermined idtcome. the prt took pains in recent days to say he's not being briefed o it,ut the white house chief of staff,

meadows, he talked the as if he had sbi malt knowledge about it. of this investigation is tenant apparently quitting because they were aaid ofhe political consequences. and this is -- this investigation has been built up so much on the right that ifer is not some sort of there-there and some real nugget for them to bi into from this, there are going to be severely dispined robert: asma, how is the biden campaign preparing for the durhamrobe if at all? and also, low they preparing to campaign in the final weeks? you see the president holding rallies, once again. yet, the biden campaign isn't do that. >> my connection is not very good i think you were asking me how the biden campaign is going to be campaigning weeks. robert: yes. asma: i apologize that i

couldn't hea correctly. in a nutshell, i've been looking in quite a bit. this week i was doingome reporting on the wide scale discrepancy between the grounme peration that you have between republicans and democrats. and this isn't just between biden and trump, this is between stateemocratic parties and state republican parties. what's notable is that you now have a situation where both candidates are physically traveling. both men were in pennsylvania. next week. but the way that they are campaigning is so fundamentally different. i mentioned i was in wisconsin with biden. and he held a small back to school eventn a supporter's backyard three people in attendance, a handful of pooled press. that wast. it's so different in tenor and tone and energy than many of donald trump's events. to me what's notable is the

scale of the ents that joe biden is holding is fundamentally different if you fly into to say a key battleground you community and you a small s event in someone's backyard and you do a couple of local interviews, is that sufficient to gerate, the kind of news buzz they feel they need? buo in additionhat they are not knocking on doors and the republicans party claims they're knocking on a milliondo s. i hear that on both the democratic and republican side that there a a difference how they're campaigning. democrats are largely campaigning and organizing a ground game that's via text, phone and zoom at this point. and there are about whether or not that is is sufficient to mobilize voterset and them out of the polls. it's a sort of untted theory. robert: when you look at the trump campaign, ashley, in its own schedule.at you roo the president releasing an updated list of

supreme court nominees, do you sense urgency about the need to get back on theoad h and toe these rallys? ashley: yes, and no.el thesing the list of the supreme court potential nominee washing that was absolutely crucial for him in that he was one of them.rvatives he wouldn't get into office an reisrt back to sort of previous ways as a lot of them viewed him, a manhatt liberal. that felt like something they were going to do. it worked in 2016. it's still important to conservatives, the court. it's a savvy move by the president, they believe to win over and, or reassure this base. in terms of him sort of gliding back into the rallies without ever really announcing them, one function that serves is ts is a president who despite everything we talked about in the beginning of the shoow g this is a deadly

pandemic, really wants it to go away. he soft of wishes he could tweet it away, imagining it away, approaching 200,000 deth, we now know -- deaths, we now know that's notow this works. but for a couple of hours, the president is able to create his peopl e reality where where many people are not wearing masks, where it feels like the coronavirus does not exist. just the other night his campaign aides tracked "new york times" reporter who was taking photos and saying hat people weren't wearing masks.it does serve this energy purpose for the president to pretend the virus isn't there. but these rallies we'll find out in about two weeks from now could be super spreader events. robert: we're going t have to leave it there, my friends. there are so much to talk about.

these weeks, explosive books from mike, from woodward. it's almost too much. we'll keep on it. asma khad, ashle parker and your time.hmidt, we appciate make sure to check out our one-on-one discussio with michael about his terrifi new book. find it tonight on our social media and our website. before weo, we remember those who died on 9/11, 19 years on. it's a solemn moment every year. and the campaig took pause on friday as the president spoke in pennsylvania and theice president and former vice president touched elbows at the world trade center. greatto. i'm robert costa. good night from washingt. [captioninperformed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its

caption content and accuracy.visit ncicap.org] announcer: corporate funng for "washington week" is provide by -- >> when the world geltz complicated, a lot goes throughm yourd. with fidelity wealth management, a dedicated aisor can tailor advice and recommendations to your life. that fidelity wealth management. announcer: additional funding is ovided by --he estate of arnold adams, andpa koo and icia yuen, through the yuen foundation, committed to bridging cultural difrences in our communities. the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station from viewe like you. thank you.

narrator: a kqed television production. ♪ ♪ ♪ [ waves crashing ] amador: all explorers are going through the same thing. looking around that next bend and seeing -- seeing what's beyond just that next horizon,s or wha look like from up on top of this. and you discover a whole new thing. in those moments, when tou just looked around bend, and something new came into focus in the body or in the mind. i think i live for those moments.