![]() The defendants said no president before Trump ever demanded royalties for publishing presidential interviews, and federal law barred him from copyrighting interviews conducted as part of his official duties. ![]() Woodward, his publisher Simon & Schuster and the publisher's parent Paramount Global PARA filed a motion to dismiss Trump's lawsuit on Monday in Manhattan federal court, where the case had been transferred last month from Pensacola, Florida. My RSS feed goes naked.The American journalist Bob Woodward is seeking to end former President Donald Trump's nearly $50 million lawsuit for publishing tapes from interviews for Woodward's 2020 best-seller "Rage" as an audiobook. No new email alert subscriptions are being honored at this time. Interview him all you want, just don’t expect anything but puzzlement and frustration in return. But if Doorstop Bob Woodward can’t wring a coherent interrogation out of somebody after 20 interviews of 600 questions, nobody can. ![]() It also doesn’t mean we should let him say whatever he wants without challenging him. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t stop trying to get him on the record. He’s a double-talk artist who uses words as protective coloration because, as a flighty and fidgety guy, he resists the compunction to be consistent. Trump interviews have been and will always be futile exercises in attempting to nail a blob of mercury because that’s the way he flows. The legal logic here parallels his belief that the government documents he allegedly pilfered and stored in Mar-a-Lago are his because he says they are. The grounds for Trump’s suit reflect his feeling that the tapes are “his,” because they were granted for print journalism purposes (Woodward’s Trump book, Rage), not audio ones. “We’ve already hired the lawyers,” Trump told a radio show host last week. Trump’s reaction to the audiobook news has been to threaten Woodward with a lawsuit, his go-to move whenever the news cycle displeases him. But the difference was, I ain’t no Bush.” Look, Bush sat with you for hours and you screwed him. Because, you know, that’s the way it goes. In the 14th interview session, Trump says to Woodward, “You’re probably going to screw me. Elsewhere on the tapes, Trump refers to Woodward as “a great historian” and “the great Bob Woodward.” Trump appears to have understood from the beginning that the service of his ego might backfire, yet he would still take the risk. Having Woodward approach him to serve as his Boswell apparently caused Trump’s ego to go def con 3. The crowning lesson of the Trump era, one that Woodward appears to have gleaned from his reporting, is that only one subject fully engages Trump’s interest, and that is Trump. It was designed for whatever reason, it was designed. He wallows in non sequiturs: Woodward asks if buddying up to Kim Jong Un was strategically designed and Trump answers, “No. ![]() He feels, as ever, put upon: “I have opposition like nobody has. Other than with the press, I’ve done a great job.” On his relationship with Kim Jong Un, “I get a sense he likes me. “We’ve done better than any - other than with the press. He turns questions into platforms for bragging and personalization: “I think we’re doing a very good job,” Trump says of his Covid response. Woodward presses Trump for details on the Covid plan only to be told, “Bob, you’ll see the plan over the next four weeks.” Writes Woodward of Trump’s ineptitude, “I wondered how you execute a plan that doesn’t exist.” He ignores questions and freestyles some brazen lies: When Woodward asks what his Covid plan is in late July 2020, Trump claims that the virus is “flaring up all over the world” but “we have it under control,” which wasn’t the case. It amounted to a large-scale deception and coverup.” Although he provides no Trump quotation that supports this assessment, Woodward writes, “It was clear that Trump never communicated the magnitude of the threat to the American people. He appears detached from his government’s Covid response: Woodward interviews officials who tell him Trump is not listening to his top medical advisers such as Anthony Fauci and Robert Redfield. I want them to investigate corruption,” a complete nonresponse to Woodward’s attempt to get him to justify his impeachment-inducing phone call to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. He avoids giving straight answers to straight questions: Woodward asks if the president of the United States should be asking foreign leaders to investigate his political opponents.
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