October 6, 2020

Bob Woodward appeared on Monday's "The Situation Room," and called for Republican leaders to put a check on Donald Trump.

Yeah like that's going to happen.

WOLF BLITZER: Let me once again read this, speaking about rage, this outrageous tweet that the president posted a little while ago in announcing his departure. "I will be leaving the great Walter Reed Medical Center today at 6:30 p.m. Feeling really good. Don't be afraid of COVID. Don't let it dominate your life. We have developed under the Trump administration some really great drugs and knowledge. I feel better than I did 20 years ago."

During your many hours and hours of conversations with the president in doing research for your book, he repeatedly downplayed the virus, admitted that downplaying the virus was actually his strategy. Does this tweet line up with everything else you heard from this president?

BOB WOODWARD: Well, the starting point here is listening to David Gergen say "we may be in the grips of a madman." I've known David Gergen for almost 50 years when he worked in the Nixon White House. I've never heard him say something that extreme. I don't know diagnostically whether that's accurate, but let's review the bidding for a moment, because that tweet comes in the context of who Trump is and what he's done and it goes back, when I did the first book on Trump, 'Fear," what had showed is that people in the West Wing of the White House who worked closest with him seized documents off his desk, wouldn't give him letters to sign, wouldn't give him material, even though he had requested it, and that was the barrier to the real Trump emerging. And we now see -- we've had 10 months of the virus -- of actually what he did, the denial, the, just, diverting attention to anything and the presentation of that evidence now is unambiguous. It is all right there before us. Then you have the attacks on the people who worked with him so closely. Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State Tillerson, the head of Intelligence. You know, probably one of the nicest people to walk the earth, Dan Coates, and just cruel dismissal saying things about them in public. Saying things about them to me that you would not say about your largest most visible enemy. These are the people he brought into the government. You look at what he's done and the major issues of the day. No plan. No organization. It is all impulse-driven. You have, I quote, Fauci saying that President Trump has a negative attention span, a negative attention -- that is a sober doctor talking about the President of the United States. The president, Fauci says, is only interested in one thing and that is reelection. And now we see this tweet, which is heartless. It is cruel. It is almost, you and I were talking at the break, Wolf, about this. Is there not somebody isn't the system in the White House who can stop something like this? If I was the guy operating the machinery that would get the president's tweet out, if that was my job, and I was 18 years old or 85, I would look at that and I would stand up and say, don't do this to yourself.

WOLF BLITZER: Is there no one surrounding the president who could tell him, "Mr. President, with all due respect, don't tell your supporters out there in the midst of the worst health crisis we're facing in more than a century, don't tell your supporters, don't be afraid of COVID. Everyone should be afraid of COVID. Look at what it's done to so many people in this country." Is there no one to tell him, "Don't do this?"

BOB WOODWARD: It's a great question. Apparently not. He said he feels better than 20 years ago. Think about this. Covid is a kind of fountain of youth. Oh, he feels better than he's ever felt in 20 years. Here's the problem. We are on the edge of a kind of government meltdown and chaos. And when is somebody in the White House, when, I keep saying this, my former partner keeps saying it too. Where is the Republican leadership? You can't let something like this happen and it's happening before our eyes and you wonder who's going to put the brakes on, because if they don't, what's the next tweet going to be? What's the next decision that's going to come out of this? Where are we headed? I find myself going to the washroom and coming back and tuning in to CNN or the internet. Have I missed something? Because let's face it. Anything can happen.

Here's what Republican "leadership" is doing.

Kelly Loeffler thinks COVID is just like Wrestlemania!

Democrat Chris Murphy of Connecticut is right:

Can you help us out?

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