Former President Trump openly discussed nuclear weapons with veteran Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward, according to newly released audio of their interviews.
“I have built a weapon system that nobody’s ever had in this country before. We have stuff that you haven’t even seen or heard about. We have stuff that Putin and Xi have never heard about before,” Trump said in a tape aired on CNN’s “Tonight.”
Woodward reportedly looked into Trump’s claims about the U.S. nuclear arsenal, and a source expressed surprise that the former president had shared details about the weapons with the journalist.
“It’s true. Xi and Putin would not know about it. But why is Trump bragging about it?” Woodward said Monday in conversation with CNN’s Jake Tapper.
“I once said to Trump, because he was kind of asking, ‘what do you think the president’s job is?’ And I said, it is to ascertain the next stage of good for a majority of people in the country, not one party or a bunch of interest groups, and then develop a comprehensive plan and execute it. And he said: ‘Oh, that’s good. That’s great.’ Never did he do this,” Woodward said.
Woodward is promoting his new audiobook, “The Trump Tapes: Bob Woodward’s Twenty Interviews with President Donald Trump.”
In some of the interviews, Trump can also be heard discussing the COVID-19 pandemic and what he described as his “good chemistry” with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
“He doesn’t understand democracy,” Woodward said of Trump in the CNN interview, during which he also knocked the former president for his inaction during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The United States was one of the rare countries formed on an idea. And that idea is democracy. He doesn’t understand that the Jan. 6 committee has proven that. He does not understand that he’s got to take care of the people. He’s got to give them advice, warning. And he didn’t do this.”