Bob Woodward

The former president has made good on his threat to sue the Washington Post reporter over his use of interview recordings. The lawsuit seeks nearly $50 million in damages.

We hear the former president striving to court Woodward's favor, praising him as "a great historian" and "the great Bob Woodward." Yet these interviews veer often into disagreements and even debates.

In times of crisis, leadership experts recommend a blunt approach. But in the early days of the pandemic, President Trump chose the opposite tactic, downplaying the threat reportedly to reduce panic.

Journalist Bob Woodward has faced some criticism for not promptly sharing with the public what the president told him about the coronavirus in a series of interviews earlier this year.

Revelations in Rage lead global health specialists to charge that Trump is scapegoating the World Health Organization.

"I don't want to jump up and down and start screaming, 'Death! Death!' " the president said when asked about why he publicly downplayed the pandemic while privately acknowledging its severity.

"I still like playing it down, because I don't want to create a panic," Bob Woodward quotes Trump as saying of COVID-19 in his book "Rage." The author concludes: "Trump is the wrong man for the job."

President Trump says he didn't want to create panic when pressed on revelations about what he knew early on about the threat of the pandemic versus what he stated publicly.

The veteran journalist was shocked by the tactics White House staff use to circumvent Trump: "I've never heard in any way of staff going around a president this way." Woodward's new book is Fear.

The veteran journalist stands behind the reporting in his new book, Fear, and says that administration officials who have denied quotes attributed to them are acting out of "political necessity."