Bob Woodward Takes Trump to Task

Bob Woodward has covered every president from Nixon to Trump in his 50 years at the Washington Post, helping the paper pick up two Pulitzer Prizes on the way.

“I’ve been accused of being a leftist, I’ve been accused of being part of a right-wing conspiracy,” Woodward said. “Last year, someone called me an ultra-centrist.”

Most famously, in the early 1970s he covered the Watergate investigation and the subsequent implosion of the Nixon administration with fellow reporter Carl Bernstein. He and Bernstein then co-authored “All the President’s Men” in 1975, a Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the investigation. His most recent book, “Fear: Trump in the White House,” details the inner workings — and chaos — of the Trump administration.

Now, after two years spent doing research and interviews for the book, Woodward came to the William Pitt Union Assembly Room Wednesday to talk about it. Several hundred people came to hear Woodward’s lecture — hosted by the Pitt Program Council — in which he talked about everything from Trump to Nixon to the process of casting the film version of “All the President’s Men.”

“My general conclusion about the Trump presidency is that we are witnessing a nervous breakdown,” Woodward said, comparing the current political atmosphere to the time just before World War I. “The sun is setting again on the world order.”

The most explosive quotes from “Fear” broke the news cycle in early September, a week before the book’s release. The Washington Post published a description of Trump, quoted in the book, from Secretary of Defense James Mattis, who said the president has “the understanding of a fifth or sixth grader,” and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly was quoted as saying of Trump, “He’s an idiot.”

Trump called Woodward in August, a month before the book’s publication, to ask why he hadn’t been interviewed. According to Woodward, though, he requested interviews through several senior Trump aides, including Kellyanne Conway and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.

Trump finished the call, of which the Post published an audio recording, by saying Woodward’s book would be “inaccurate.”

Trump’s denial of the book’s accuracy is part of his general denouncement of the “fake news” media, a stance which Woodward called a “strategic decision” to undermine the media’s credibility.

Some reporters, he said, allow Trump’s attacks on the media to cloud their reporting, but it’s important that they cover Trump the same way they would cover any president.

“You have to be factual,” Woodward said. “You have to not be emotional.”

Debbi Gillotti, a Pitt trustee who works at the software company nVoq at the corporate level, bought a copy of “Fear” from a table set up in the back of the room. She said she thinks she’s read every book Woodward’s written since he started publishing them.

“I lived through the Watergate years,” Gillotti said. “I was wondering how the anecdotes that seemed to all be from the early ’70s would resonate with a [student] audience, but I thought they were insightful. Certainly, for someone of my generation, a lot of them resonated.”

Maddie Ward, PPC’s lecture director, introduced Woodward at the beginning of his lecture. She had the idea to bring Woodward for a lecture at Pitt when she heard about his book earlier in the fall.

“It ended up working out that he was available and he wanted to do it,” Ward, a senior marketing major, said. “I thought it was interesting to be able to hear what he actually had to say rather than just reading it off a page.”

Students filled most of the crowd, which Woodward noted with pleasure. They lined up at microphones on both sides of the room to ask questions after the talk, and PPC members eventually had to turn students away. One senior English literature major, Adam Bumas, asked Woodward for recommended reading on history and politics for better context on current events.

“Give me your email,” Woodward said to Bumas, and promised to send him a list.

After the talk, Bumas stood at the side of the room, collecting email addresses from people who stopped to talk to him, saying he would forward the reading list once he’d received it. As for “All the President’s Men,” Bumas said he’s already read it — or at least most of it.

“Obviously, I’ve seen the movie.” He paused and laughed. “Before I had read or seen ‘All the President’s Men,’ I read the Mad [Magazine] parody, ‘Gall of the President’s Men.’”

Another student had brought four different Woodward books, hoping for a moment when the journalist could sign them. Though Woodward didn’t do any book signings, the student did get the opportunity to ask him a question — what advice did he have for an aspiring journalist?

“Go to the scene,” Woodward said. “[Reporters] are not showing up in our business.”

Many modern reporters he knows conduct most of their interviews by email or phone, Woodward said. But he’s gotten his best results by meeting with his sources in person — even when that means tracking down a source’s address and showing up at the front door in the middle of the night.

“You have to have personal relations with people,” he said. “It’s the key.”