Legendary journalist Bob Woodward expressed extreme concern on Tuesday night over his belief that President Donald Trump can’t tell the difference between reality and fiction, prompting CNN anchor Anderson Cooper to say that is “pretty terrifying.”
Appearing for an hour-long interview on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 to discuss more eye-popping details from his new Trump blockbuster Rage, Woodward talked about one conversation he had with the president after he was done reporting for the book.
Recalling that Trump called him roughly a month ago to see if he could get the peace deal between United Arab Emirates and Israel into the book, Woodward noted that after he told the president it wasn’t possible, Trump took to Twitter a short time later and complained that the upcoming book would be “fake.”
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Cooper then pointed out that earlier on Tuesday the president told Fox & Friends that he had already read Woodward’s book, adding that the president isn’t exactly “known to be a big reader and certainly not a speed reader.”
Woodward, meanwhile, pointed out Trump’s conflicting statements on the book within the interview, claiming first that the book was “very boring” before a Fox host asked him whether it was accurate.
“He said, ‘It’s okay. I mean, it’s fine,’” the veteran reporter said. “And, you know, he’d been out saying it’s a political hit job and all of these things. I don’t know to be honest whether he’s got it straight in his head what is real and what is unreal.”
“That is why at the end of the book I say, in totality, my judgment is this is the wrong man for the job,” he continued. “How can you have the experience of living this White House the way I have for the last four plus years? And having not just discussions with him but people in the White House, people in the CIA, people in the Pentagon, people in the State Department trying to get the whole picture of what this administration is. How can you have that experience and not reach that conclusion?”
The CNN anchor exclaimed that Woodward’s observation was “pretty terrifying” before asking him whether there’s been any other president he’s interviewed in the past that he felt couldn’t discern what’s real or not.
“No,” Woodward frankly replied.
