The Trump Tapes

“I’m doing something here that I’ve never done before, presenting the lengthy, raw interviews of my work. In the fall of 2019 through August 2020, I interviewed President Trump 19 times for my second book on his presidency, Rage. I had also interviewed him in 2016 when he was a presidential candidate. I decided to take this unusual step of releasing these recordings after relistening in full to all 20 interviews. As I listened to them again I was stunned by their relevance to understanding Trump. Hearing Trump speak is a completely different experience to reading the transcripts or listening to snatches of interviews on television or the internet.” Bob Woodward from 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.

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.