THE TRUMP TAPES

THE TRUMP TAPES is the intimate and astonishing audio archive of Bob Woodward’s 20 interviews with Donald Trump. 

Featuring more than eight hours of Woodward/Trump conversations, THE TRUMP TAPES is as historically important as the Frost/Nixon interviews.  In this up-close, unvarnished self-portrait of Trump and his presidency, listeners will hear Trump as Woodward did: profane, incautious, divisive, and deceptive, but also engaging and entertaining, ever the host and the salesman, trying to sell his presidency to win Woodward over.

 Relying on familiar devices —airing grievances, stoking divisions, repeating himself to a staggering degree, as if saying something often and loud enough will make something true — Trump uses his voice as a concussive instrument, pounding in the listener’s ear.

 Woodward presses Trump on the topics that defined one of the most consequential years in American history – Trump’s first impeachment, the devastating COVID-19 pandemic, and the largest racial justice protests in the United States since the civil rights movement. Within the interviews, Woodward questions and fact checks the president, and their discussions were so often heated that Woodward frequently expected each interview to be their last. But the president kept calling and continued to answer Woodward’s calls – a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to ask a sitting president about anything, any time.

Listeners will also hear Melania Trump, Donald Trump Jr, Lindsey Graham, Dan Scavino, KellyAnne Conway, Vice President Mike Pence, and others in the background during these interview sessions.  Audio excerpts of Woodward’s interviews with Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien and his Deputy Matt Pottinger are also included.

In new commentary created exclusively for THE TRUMP TAPES, Woodward at times breaks frame from the interviews to provide essential context or clarification. But for the most part the interviews proceed uninterrupted, fulfilling Woodward’s goal of presenting Trump’s voice and words for the historical record, and offering listeners the chance to hear and judge and make their own assessments.

As relevant as ever to the task of understanding Donald Trump, THE TRUMP TAPES reveal Trump in his own words — a man consumed by the past and clinging to his grievances, unable to understand his responsibilities as president or address the crises affecting the country.