Trump LOSES It On Bob Woodward For Releasing Tapes of Their Interviews: He ‘Had NO Right to Use My VOICE’
L: Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images R: L: Jeff Swensen/Getty Images
Former President Donald Trump lashed out at legendary journalist and author Bob Woodward for releasing over 8 hours of raw audio from 20 interviews for Woodward’s audiobook.
Woodward has been making the rounds in support of his audiobook The Trump Tapes, and defending his decision to release the recordings of the interviews he conducted between 2016 and 2020.
On Tuesday, Trump lashed out at Woodward via his social media platform, and claimed Woodward and his publisher did not have the right to use the tapes or “my ‘VOICE'”:
As he fully understands, writer Bob Woodward never got my permission to release tapes of my various interviews with him.Those tapes were allowed only for purposes of making sure that he got my quotes & statements correct for “the WRITTEN WORD,” in other words, for his, nevertheless, highly inaccurate book.The tapes are much better than the book, at least if they were not bludgeoned to death by him to make me look as bad as possible, but he & his publisher had NO right to use my “VOICE” or them!
Trump’s attack came minutes after an op-ed by George Packer was published by The Atlantic that criticized the media for not ignoring Trump, and which included a passage on Woodward’s use of Trump’s voice:
But Woodward has taken this unprecedented step in his new audiobook because Woodward’s The Trump Tapes is “central to understanding Trump as he is poised to seek the presidency again,” Woodward explains in the Post essay adapted from Woodward’s The Trump Tapes. “You cannot separate Trump from his voice,” Woodward explains. “Trump’s voice magnifies his presence.”
That could explain Trump’s use of quotation marks around the word “voice,” as well as the timing of the post — two days after Woodward’s essay in The Washington Post defending the tapes and several hours after the book’s official release.
