Watergate reporter Bob Woodward showcased some of the audio clips of his book on Donald Trump, Rage, which showcases how the words on the page can sound flat, but the audio can reveal a lot about the former president in his final year in office.
At several points in the Woodward piece, he highlights that Trump's voice is always filled with a kind of delusional confidence. His emphatic "no" when he is asked if the pandemic was a "leadership test."
In one excerpt, which was also in the book, Trump proclaims, "You’re probably going to screw me. Because, you know, that’s the way it goes. Look, [George W.] Bush sat with you for hours and you screwed him. But the difference was, I ain’t no Bush."
Woodward explains that Trump's voice in this case makes the mockery clear. It's ironic because Trump makes it clear that he knows he won't come off well in the book, but he thinks he's still better than anyone else.
He goes on to cite an excerpt of his questions about Kim Jong Un, which Trump said the CIA was wrong about. According to Trump, Kim is very smart, whereas the CIA disagrees.
"Because they don’t know. Okay?" Trump says. "Because they don’t know. They have no idea. I’m the only one that knows. I’m the only one he deals with. He won’t deal with anybody else."
While that's true, the CIA isn't dealing with Kim to conduct diplomacy. The CIA has followed him since he was born and has decades of intelligence on him. It's simply what the intelligence committee does. Trump never liked the intelligence community, however, because several agencies passed around a dossier about him claiming he had a fetish he found objectionable.
"The word chemistry. You meet somebody and you have a good chemistry. You meet a woman. In one second you know whether or not it’s all going to happen," Trump told Woodward, comparing Kim to a lover.
Trump goes on to say that nothing he did was about bringing Kim to the negotiating table, despite that being his goal going to North Korea.
"It was designed for whatever reason, it was designed. Who knows? Instinctively. Let’s talk instinct."
Listen to the audio clips from Woodward at the Washington Post.
