Trump says Bob Woodward had ‘no right’ to release recordings of their conversations

Despite anger at release of tapes, former president says they are better than Woodward’s book

Donald Trump took to Truth Social on Tuesday lunchtime to complain about veteran journalist Bob Woodward’s recent release of his recorded conversations with the former president.

Mr Trump wrote: “As he fully understands, writer Bob Woodward never got my permission to release tapes of my various interviews with him. Those tapes were allowed only for purposes of making sure that he got my quotes & statements correct for “the WRITTEN WORD,” in other words, for his, nevertheless, highly inaccurate book.”

He continued: “The tapes are much better than the book, at least if they were not bludgeoned to death by him to make me look as bad as possible, but he & his publisher had NO right to use my ‘VOICE’ or them!”

Mr Woodward, who made his name for his coverage of the Watergate scandal in the early 1970s, recently released an audiobook of the recordings with commentary about the conversations with the then-president that he taped while writing a book towards the end of the Trump presidency.

The veteran journalist also made a rare attack on Mr Trump in an op-ed published on Sunday in The Washington Post, calling him “an unparalleled danger”.

He wrote that in “more than 50 years of reporting, I have never disclosed the raw interviews or full transcripts of my work. But after listening again to the 20 interviews I conducted with President Donald Trump during his last year as chief executive, I have decided to take the unusual step of releasing them. I was struck by how Trump pounded in my ears in a way the printed page cannot capture”.

Mr Woodward noted that he ended a previous book about Mr Trump, entitled Rage, with the words “when his performance as president is taken in its entirety, I can only reach one conclusion: Trump is the wrong man for the job”.

“Two years later, I realise I didn’t go far enough,” he continued. “Trump is an unparalleled danger. When you listen to him on the range of issues from foreign policy to the virus to racial injustice, it’s clear he did not know what to do. Trump was overwhelmed by the job. He was largely disconnected from the needs and leadership expectations of the public and his absolute self-focus became the presidency.”

“‘The Trump Tapes’ leaves no doubt that after four years in the presidency, Trump has learned where the levers of power are, and full control means installing absolute loyalists in key Cabinet and White House posts, Mr Woodward added.

The 79-year-old journalist added that “the record now shows that Trump has led — and continues to lead — a seditious conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election, which in effect is an effort to destroy democracy”.

He wrote that Mr Trump serves as a reminder of “how easy it is to break things you do not understand — democracy and the presidency”.