200K people will likely be dead by the end of the week and Woodward held on to this for six months for a book?!?!
You can say all you want that it wouldn’t have mattered if it had come out sooner, but the fact remains that sitting on this is irresponsible.
Bob Woodward, facing widespread criticism for only now revealing President Donald Trump’s early concerns about the severity of the coronavirus, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that he needed time to be sure that Trump’s private comments from February were accurate.
In Woodward’s upcoming book on Trump, “Rage,” the president is quoted saying the virus was highly contagious and “deadly stuff” at a time he was publicly dismissing it as no worse than the flu. Woodward, the celebrated Washington Post journalist and best-selling author, spoke with Trump more than a dozen times for his book.
“He tells me this, and I’m thinking, ‘Wow, that’s interesting, but is it true?’ Trump says things that don’t check out, right?” Woodward told the AP during a telephone interview. Using a famous phrase from the Watergate era, when Woodward’s reporting for the Post helped lead to President Richard Nixon’s resignation, Woodward said his mission was to determine, “What did he know and when did he know it?”
I can certainly appreciate wanting to confirm facts and get multiple sources ... but what sources does he need to consult to report “Trump said ‘XYZ’ and I have him on tape saying it”?
I can't believe we are going to turn this around and blame Woodward.
I worry about this, too. I don’t think anyone is above criticism. The timing, moral imperative, etc., can all be debated. But it does feel like that’s all part of the trump machine. Question the messenger. Delegitimize the messenger. What message? I’m great, remember? That guy just wanted money/raging liberal/liar/whatever.
I can't believe we are going to turn this around and blame Woodward.
Right, like he's the ONLY person Trump blabbed to. Remember all the Senators that just so happened to sell stocks before March? Betting there are a LOT of reasons Trump doesn't want his taxes released....
200K people will likely be dead by the end of the week and Woodward held on to this for six months for a book?!?!
You can say all you want that it wouldn’t have mattered if it had come out sooner, but the fact remains that sitting on this is irresponsible.
And just what do you think would have happened if Woodword had released this information six months ago? Do you really think anything would have changed? Who would have done anything to stop 45 from denying that it was an issue? Nothing would have changed. I'm not saying he should have kept it to himself but it wasn't like Trump confessed to the murder of Jimmy Hoffa.
LOL, y’all. No one is blaming Woodward. Trump is horrible. He (and his cronies) are the reason we are where we are.
I already said I don’t know that it would have made a difference? Just because something wouldn’t make a difference doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter. The impeachment made no difference, should we not have done it (actually, I’m remembering some of you thought we shouldn’t.) How do you sit on recordings of the President contradicting what he is telling the public about a pandemic that is killing people for months?
Also...I am tired of trying to understand crazy but I can't believe Trump let BOB WOODWARD interview him and record all of the interviews. But yeah, we're supposed to be more concerned about Biden's mental acuity.
Yes when I was reading the WaPo article and seeing all the things Trump said I was like, “did he know who Bob Woodward is?” Because it is crazy to me he said those things to an author/journalist.
I want to push back on us again here. And, much credit goes to Pod Save America for this (again.) We (Democrats) HAVE to cut this shit out with the, "It doesn't matter, nothing matters, it'll never change." Because
1. Yes, it does. There's not a single thing that will change some of the base. They're stable. We don't have to change the base. If we get 33,000 people in a couple of states to stay home or shift their votes, that's the election.
2. There's no magic bullet. The race is incredibly stable. It won't swing 15 points by a single revelation. But this will piss off a couple of people enough to change their vote/get out the vote. The comments about the military will do the same. The Justice Department fuckery will do the same. My own mom was swayed from Trump 2016 to now STRONG Biden (she's fighting strangers on Facebook ) over what I'd consider to be a tiny drop in the bucket. But, for her, that was the drop.
3. The GOP HOPES we do this "Woe is me, nothing matters" crap loudly and for a long time. Because what that will do is take some of our own likely potential Democratic voters who aren't as engaged as we are (i.e., this base) and convince them that their vote is worthless so they might as well stay home.
As someone who is not a natural optimist, I'm trying really hard right now to be engaged and positive, but that's what we all need to do.
While I agree with almost everything you wrote, I also maintain he can still win.
And if he doesn’t win, I’m worried he will do what he can to not leave, up to and including insurrection.
We absolutely need to do everything we can to encourage people to vote blue and I’m signed up to train for texting. I am engaged as fuck.
I want to push back on us again here. And, much credit goes to Pod Save America for this (again.) We (Democrats) HAVE to cut this shit out with the, "It doesn't matter, nothing matters, it'll never change." Because
1. Yes, it does. There's not a single thing that will change some of the base. They're stable. We don't have to change the base. If we get 33,000 people in a couple of states to stay home or shift their votes, that's the election.
2. There's no magic bullet. The race is incredibly stable. It won't swing 15 points by a single revelation. But this will piss off a couple of people enough to change their vote/get out the vote. The comments about the military will do the same. The Justice Department fuckery will do the same. My own mom was swayed from Trump 2016 to now STRONG Biden (she's fighting strangers on Facebook ) over what I'd consider to be a tiny drop in the bucket. But, for her, that was the drop.
3. The GOP HOPES we do this "Woe is me, nothing matters" crap loudly and for a long time. Because what that will do is take some of our own likely potential Democratic voters who aren't as engaged as we are (i.e., this base) and convince them that their vote is worthless so they might as well stay home.
As someone who is not a natural optimist, I'm trying really hard right now to be engaged and positive, but that's what we all need to do.
While I agree with almost everything you wrote, I also maintain he can still win.
And if he doesn’t win, I’m worried he will do what he can to not leave, up to and including insurrection.
We absolutely need to do everything we can to encourage people to vote blue and I’m signed up to train for texting. I am engaged as fuck.
But I am not positive.
I agree with you 100%. I also think that no matter what, Nov-Jan is going to be even worse than now-Nov.
I’m not sure anything would have been different if Woodward told us in March. At that time, it was still mostly a blue state issue and didn’t It come out a month or so ago that because it was blue states, they (Kushner) didn’t think it would help them politically to get involved and give a shit. Think about all the people that could have leaked in Jan or Feb that we were fucked and no one really did. I guess you can count Peter Navarros memo but they came late too.
Post by Velar Fricative on Sept 9, 2020 20:25:07 GMT -5
His details about the deadlines of the virus were shared well before the virus came to NY and did its damage. 23k+ people died in this city, 10x the amount of people who died here on 9/11. Cuomo has harped on the point that the feds did nothing to prevent the virus from coming from Europe to attack the East Coast, and this looks way more deliberate to me. No, they were not blindsided. If in FEBRUARY Trump was saying this spreads through the air, way before we were wiping down our groceries thinking that was the primary source of transmission, they knew that shit was in Europe already and likely going to make its way here. But the Europe travel ban came way too late. Gah I am so fucking mad.
Also...I am tired of trying to understand crazy but I can't believe Trump let BOB WOODWARD interview him and record all of the interviews. But yeah, we're supposed to be more concerned about Biden's mental acuity.
Oh, I can. He's a megalomaniac narcissist. He is so convinced that he's right and that he's above any and all reproach, that he'll flat out admit everything in a second and then turn around and deny it all and attempt to discredit Woodward and the media. It's what he does. It's what he's always done.
Bingo! Great quote from the Mooch* in this Politico article:
“Trump loves brands, and Woodward has been the gold standard for 50 years of investigative journalism around the presidency, so it's the same reason why he likes the Gray Lady, he likes The New York Times. It's the paper of record traditionally in his hometown, so even though both excoriate him, he's attracted to them the way a low-IQ small moth would be to a flame,” said Anthony Scaramucci, who briefly served as White House communications director under Trump. “Trump is always convinced that if he talks to the person, he is going to elucidate and enlighten that person and get them to like him.”
*There has been so much crazy in this shitshow of an administration that I’d forgotten about him. He left us too soon....sigh.
Also...I am tired of trying to understand crazy but I can't believe Trump let BOB WOODWARD interview him and record all of the interviews. But yeah, we're supposed to be more concerned about Biden's mental acuity.
$10 says this is who Trump thinks Carl Bernstein is:
I cannot stop laughing at this. I’m sharing it, giving credit to “my friend”
I can't believe we are going to turn this around and blame Woodward.
Exactly. Those interviews were done SIX MONTHS ago and the book is out tomorrow. He is a credible journalist and his publisher has lots of lawyers to appease first. That’s incredibly fast, even if time feels elastic.
I can't believe we are going to turn this around and blame Woodward.
I'm not blaming Woodward. I blame 45 and everyone who knew that 45 knew it was deadly and was lying. I blame the R members of Congress who held the party line publicly and privately traded stocks based on this information.
But I think had 45's acknowledgement of the truth come out sooner there is a chance that people (general people) wouldn't be so entrenched in pandemic response as a political statement. Because it would have meant people on both sides of the aisle acknowledging early on that this is a big deal and we need to act.
Maybe not. But the shittacular, highly politicized federal response has had predictable effects. And I would like to imagine a counterfactual where that didn't happen.
I have been trying avoid an over-abundance of cable news lately, but I did watch parts of Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow last night on MSNBC.
This is my take away from it - Trump didn't want to be blamed for mishandling the response to the virus, so he downplayed it and left it to the governors instead of taking a federal approach. The fact that the initial outbreak was in blue states gave him an extra layer of protection. His supporters weren't going to complain because they were not the most impacted. But, even in states like GA with a Republican governor, they went along with the party line that it wasn't a big deal and avoided state mandates.
I don't blame Bernstein for not releasing the tapes earlier because Trump didn't know anything that the scientists and many in Congress knew as well. We saw Trump in real time contradict his experts and intentionally ignore facts. The recordings are further proof Trump is less concerned about the safety and security of the nation than he is about getting re-elected, but I don't think releasing them earlier would have changed the national response.
Yes, and at the time we had the information from the economic devastation that was wrought on the countries that did completely shut down. He knew that if the shutdown became a federal mandate, that it would greatly hurt his re-election.
We and other liberals like to paint him as dumb, but he's not. He also has plenty of people that understand the things he doesn't, and are willing to pull the strings. Every single thing he has done hasn't been out of ignorance. It's been calculated.
Post by Dumbledork on Sept 10, 2020 9:56:38 GMT -5
Trump tweets:
“Bob Woodward had my quotes for many months. If he thought they were so bad or dangerous, why didn’t he immediately report them in an effort to save lives? Didn’t he have an obligation to do so? No, because he knew they were good and proper answers. Calm, no panic!”
“Bob Woodward had my quotes for many months. If he thought they were so bad or dangerous, why didn’t he immediately report them in an effort to save lives? Didn’t he have an obligation to do so? No, because he knew they were good and proper answers. Calm, no panic!”
“Bob Woodward had my quotes for many months. If he thought they were so bad or dangerous, why didn’t he immediately report them in an effort to save lives? Didn’t he have an obligation to do so? No, because he knew they were good and proper answers. Calm, no panic!”
Damn. This is so backwards, I don't even know what to make of it.
The fact that the quotes were released this week has not and will not change the Federal response, and it wouldn't have if they were released months ago, either. The President is still downplaying and lying about the virus and making fun of mask and distancing mandates, and his supporters are eating it up. He's trying to disparage Woodward over this, and if Woodward had released the tapes months ago, it would've played out the same way. It's damning to hear Trump admit it, but we've all known he was lying all along. The virus was never going to just disappear.
“Bob Woodward had my quotes for many months. If he thought they were so bad or dangerous, why didn’t he immediately report them in an effort to save lives? Didn’t he have an obligation to do so? No, because he knew they were good and proper answers. Calm, no panic!”
"Calm, no panic!"
And then an hour later he tweeted about how suburbia will never be safe under Democrats.