Bob Woodward releases bizarre tape of Donald Trump and Kellyanne Conway

| 5:55 pm EDT September 4, 2018
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Back when Donald Trump falsely accused former FBI Director James Comey of having secretly recorded their private conversations, Comey famously said “Lordy, I hope there are tapes.” Since that time, Trump’s own former people ranging from Michael Cohen to Omarosa have released tapes that have humiliated and/or incriminated Trump. Now it turns out Bob Woodward – of Woodward and Bernstein fame – has at least one Trump tape, as well as numerous tapes of Trump’s people.

Woodward spent a lot of time interviewing people in Donald Trump’s White House for his upcoming new insider book. Trump never did give Woodward an interview, but after the book was finished, Trump called Woodward on the phone an claimed he wanted to do the interview. Woodward taped the call, and now he’s released it, along with a transcript. It paints Trump as, well, arguably even less coherent than the book does.

At various points during the phone call, Donald Trump claims that he didn’t know Bob Woodward was writing a book about him, then admits that Lindsey Graham did tell him about it. Trump tried to convince Woodward that if Hillary Clinton had become president, America’s GDP would now be “less than zero.” It’s not clear if that was hyperbole, or if Trump actually thinks GDP can be a negative number. Trump then admitted that Kellyanne Conway and others on his staff are “afraid to come and talk” to him. That’s when Woodward revealed that he recorded his conversations with all of Trump’s people.

Kellyanne Conway then incredibly joined the phone call, and acknowledged to Bob Woodward that she did indeed decline to take the request directly to Trump. Kellyanne and Woodward then had a lengthy discussion about how things actually work in Trump’s White House, and it became clear that there is no protocol for anything. You can read the entire lengthy transcript here. You can buy the book here.