— —
Eye-opening to say the least.
Tim Miller of The Bulwark, talks to Bob Woodward, about his new book “War.”
The behind-the-scenes reveals of the Ukraine “high-stakes” situation is startling. Especially the way the Biden administration deftly handled it ... (to prevent a nuclear conflagration.)
But I found these other two exchanges, below, to be even more eye-opening. And somehow worth exploring more, during everyday discussions about the qualifications for President.
— —
The YouTube clip is below. Note: I’ve cleaned up the auto-transcript for readability: Removing time-stamps. Adding punctuation, sentence and paragraph structure. And edited out the ‘ums’, ‘ands’, repeated words, and unneeded ‘broken phrases’ ie. thought-gathering. yw.
To get the whole gist of it, just watch the clip.
[21:10]
MILLER: The other thing that you, the other person you quote on this topic of their relationship Trump and Putin in the book is Dan Coats, Trump's own Director of National Intelligence — who called the relationship an enigma.
And he said is it blackmail, he wondered if it was blackmail.
[cross-talk ...] just the thing that is confusing to me, I just I don't understand how his own Director of National Intelligence would not know what was happening in the relationship?
WOODWARD: Well [...] he sees it's Coat, who really for two and half years was Trump's Director of National Intelligence — all the intelligence agencies including the CIA, sees uh this uh not — they don't have all the information. But he sees it, you know.
This is so strange. It is so subservient on Trump's part. He actually asks, when I discussed this with Coats several months ago, he said "Is this blackmail?" In other words, is Trump being blackmailed?
MILLER: I mean that is wild. I don't think that has really sunk in for the public yet, that his own Director of National Intelligence suspects he might be getting blackmailed. That's not it's not a Democrat. It's not this is not some crazy liberal commentator.
It's his own Director of National Intelligence that suspects that.
WOODWARD: Yes, and one of the very important elements in all of this, is to understand how good our intelligence is. As I report in the book, at one point United States as a human source in the Kremlin that, the electronic and technical intelligence. It's never perfect but it's much greater, so when they get into seeing War plans, it's not something that's just partial. It's a complete lay down.
MILLER: Yeah it also sheds into a different light, the question about the Classified Documents. I know you're not you're reporting, not speculating. But again he's may be having these calls. He has these Classified Documents. And his own Director of National Intelligence is worried that there might be a blackmail situation. At minimum I think it raises additional questions about that.
WOODWARD: Yes and everything Trump does, he swims in questions and doubt. And so if you pull back and try to think: Who is he? He was president ...
“He was president” overseeing a once-in-a-century global pandemic …
[24:19 — Warning Trump about COVID]
I spent the year 2020, his last year of his presidency, talking to — I think I interviewed him 19 times, for 9 hours. This is the year of COVID, and when it's all laid out, it's frightening:
Trump was warned when there was 1 COVID case in the United States, by his own National Security advisor Robert O'Brien, coming in saying: this is from our intelligence; this is coming to the United States. And it is going to overwhelm the country. And 650,000 people will likely die.
And Trump had this kind of extraordinary warning.
And this goes to a characteristic of Trump, which is really important I think, sometimes not fully understood:
He does not even understand his own interest as President. The carrying out the responsibility. And you get this kind of warning, and all you can you — it's not hard:
Just go to the public and you say, I've got this warning comes from very good sources. We're going to take it seriously. We are going to plan.
I once asked him: What's the job of the president? He said: To protect the public, I'm going to protect the public.
And instead that whole year he waffled and dodged.
[...]
[jumping ahead about ten seconds, 26:47]
On July 20th [2020] I said: Mr President 140,000 people have died from this virus already. That he'd been, all he had to do was warn the public.
And he keeps saying: "No, no, it's going to go away. It's going to be fine."
As I had asked before, but I ask again: What's the plan? What are you going to do?
This is one of those interviews with the sitting president, where your head kind of spins. And he said:
"Oh don't worry. I'll have a plan. I'll have a plan in 106 days."
What? 106 days? I realize that's Election Day. He's worried about the Election in 106 days.
And again this is you know you psychiatrists will be able to have a field day with this. Why would somebody with his extraordinary authority as president, not act? Not plan? Somehow got this idea that, this is going to go away. And that he can have a plan in 106 days?
This is like somebody sitting in their house — and there's a fire. And somebody suggests well we better call 911 — but let's wait 16 days.
MILLER: That's right. That's wild.
WOODWARD: Inconceivable, irresponsible.
MILLER: Yeah, and he has this combination of just recklessness, irresponsibility, and malice. You know that takes us to the other kind of reveal from the book about [...]
[28:51 — Milley and Mattis on Trump’s threat]
[...]
Like, I said: eye-opening.
This should go viral (and not in the COVID-way). But it probably won’t.
—
Bob Woodward's Trump Revelations Raise Terrifying Questions (w/ Bob Woodward) | The Bulwark Podcast
The Bulwark — July 17, 2024
—
I haven’t the words, to recap this … Soooo … I’ll just say: Good Night.
— —
pleasant dreams ...
