As fallout from Bob Woodward's book Rage continued on, the journalists of Thursday's Andrea Mitchell Reports came together for some Monday morning quarterbacking on President Trump's handling of the pandemic, with Woodward's Washington Post colleague Phillip Rucker using the book to blame Trump for 190,000 COVID deaths.
Host Andrea Mitchell led Rucker not with a question, but with the assertion that "these tapes are more damaging than the Nixon tapes."
Rucker agreed and cited Woodward's Watergate partner Carl Bernstein as evidence, "Yeah, Andrea, I think that's right. And Woodward's longtime collaborator, Carl Bernstein, said yesterday on television that he thinks these are the worst tapes, worse than Watergate, in presidential history."
Rucker's argument is diminished by the fact that everything a Republican does is worse than Watergate according to Bernstein. Before he said in 2018 that the entire Trump presidency "is worse than Watergate," he urged Congress in 2006 to investigate the totality of the Bush Administration in a Watergate-like manner.
Still, Rucker continued, "What's so important here is it's President Trump in his own words, in his own voice, acknowledging that he was deceiving the public and lying about the breadth and the danger posed by this virus, and it had deadly consequences, obviously. We're at over 190,000 lives lost in the United States, vastly greater death toll than any other country in the world."
At no point did Mitchell or Rucker say what Trump should have done differently. Even the Biden campaign has been forced to walk back its nominal mask mandate over constitutional concerns, the same constitution doesn't allow Trump to shut everything down even if he wanted to, and the political climate at the time would not have allowed it even if Trump urged it. Nor is the president so powerful that he can prevent people from dying from underlining health conditions that are more prevalent in the U.S.
It's one thing to criticize Trump, but it is unscientific nonsense to say that he is responsible for 190,000 deaths from a novel virus.
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Here is a transcript of the September 10 show:
MSNBC
Andrea Mitchell
12:05 PM ET
ANDREA MITCHELL: Peter, you know Bob Woodward and have worked with him, I've known him for decades. This is really, these tapes are more damaging than the Nixon tapes. To Phil, sorry, I meant to say Phil.
PHILLIP RUCKER: Yeah, Andrea, I think that's right. And Woodward's longtime collaborator, Carl Bernstein, said yesterday on television that he thinks these are the worst tapes, worse than Watergate, in presidential history. What's so important here is it's President Trump in his own words, in his own voice, acknowledging that he was deceiving the public and lying about the breadth and the danger posed by this virus, and it had deadly consequences, obviously. We're at over 190,000 lives lost in the United States, vastly greater death toll than any other country in the world. And, you know, to hear Woodward in that excerpt you played there makes me think of the epilogue in his book "Rage." At the very end of the book, Woodward actually draws a conclusion about President Trump, which is not something he has done in past books. He's very much a reporter's reporter, just presents the facts. But in "Rage" he says, look, I can arrive at no other conclusion but to say this is the wrong man for the job.
