Trump. Well, okay, three technically, but the third one included material that we had already seen in the washington posts first report of Bob Woodwards book last week. We saw that in print. We just got to hear the audio of it today for the first time. The latest tape released tonight shows donald trump telling bob woodward something he has never said publicly about how deadly the coronavirus is. This thing is a killer if it gets you. If youre the wrong person you dont have a chance. Yes. Yes, exactly. So this rips you apart. This is a scourge. And it is the plague. Herman cain was the wrong person. He was in the higher age group thats particularly vulnerable to the coronavirus. Herman cain attended the last indoor trump rally before the Trump Campaign temporarily stopped having rallies. Herman cain died of coronavirus six weeks later at age 74. Herman cain didnt wear a mask at the trump rally. People were not doing much social distancing at that rally. And last night in nevada when donald trump had his first indoor rally since the rally herman cain attended, most people were not Wearing Masks and most people were not socially distancing and they were doing that after bob woodward revealed last week that donald trump knows how deadly the coronavirus is and has always known how deadly it is and has never told those people at those rallies. Bob woodwards revelations so far seem to be having absolutely no effect on donald trump followers who risk their lives by gathering at trump rallies without masks, without social distancing. Donald trump makes sure that hes the only person who social distances from everyone at trump rallies. He explained to a nevada reporter why he doesnt worry about his rallies. Well, im not concerned. Im more concerned about how close you are. Sorry about that. Because you know why . Im on a stage. Its very far away and so im not at all concerned. On a stage very far away. So hes safe. In another tape bob woodward released today of a conversation with the president on august 14th, we hear that donald trump has no idea why he is losing to joe biden in every poll of the president ial campaign, including the latest fox poll that shows joe biden at 51 and donald trump at 46. In their conversation about the president ial campaign, bob woodward tries and fails to get the president to see the relationship between controlling the coronavirus and rebuilding the economy. Its going to be a contest between you and biden. Its going to be a contest between both of you and the virus. The virus is said because its in real peoples lives, you know . All those tens of millions of people who dont have jobs, who dont have i know. That in listen. I mean, you and i but nothing more could have been done. Nothing more could have been done. I acted early. I acted early. This will be the history that we start the first draft of. And it will continue and so you think the virus totally supersedes the economy . Oh, sure. But theyre related, as you know. Little bit, yeah. Oh, little bit . I mean i mean, more than a little bit. But the economy is doing look, were close to a new stock market record. Nothing more could have been done. Controlling the coronavirus and rebuilding the economy are not just related a little bit. They are the same thing. But donald trump cant see that. And donald trump seems to make the mistake of thinking the stock market is the economy. And so donald trump doesnt know that half of the people in his hometown where the stock market happens to be located do not know how they are going to pay for their housing as the cold winter months approach. Winter months that could combine a second wave of the coronavirus with the seasonal flu. Bob woodward has never seen anything like it. He has seen every president since Richard Nixon in a way that no one else in American History has seen so many president s. Bob woodward has gotten inside of every white house since the Nixon White House and seen the president in action through the words of the people working most closely with that president and sometimes through the words of that president himself in interviews with bob woodward for his now 19 books. Most of them about the closed door deliberations of nine president s in a row. In his new book rage bob woodward begins with a description of donald trump being told how deadly the coronavirus could be in a white house meeting on january 28th. The state of the Union Address was on february 4th, just days after the president was told how deadly the coronavirus would be and how it would be the most difficult challenge his presidency had faced. He gave his state of the Union Address to congress. 40 Million People watched it. He had an opportunity hes very kind of not kind of. He said, well, were doing everything possible. At that moment if like Franklin Roosevelt after pearl harbor had told the American People the truth, a lot more could have been done. It is one of those shocks, for me, having written about nine president s, that the president of the United States possessed the specific knowledge that could have saved lives. Historians are going to be writing about the lost month of february for tens of years. Its not easy to shock bob woodward, who covered the nixon presidency, remember. That was bob woodward on the today show today expressing his shock that the president possessed specific knowledge that could have saved lives. And on the today show bob woodward expressed his surprise at how donald trump seems proud, proud of how gets along with cruel dictators and not the leaders of democratic societies. He decides and he has decided, oh, im going to get along with putin. Im going to get along with the crown prince of saudi arabia, mbs. And im going to try to get along with kim jongun, the leader of north korea. But not south korea. And he just smears south korea time and time again in my interviews. He has he is the face of the United States to the world. Bob and he has said, and there it is, hey, look, i get along with these bad guys but not the good guys. Bob woodward, who will join us on this program on wednesday night, released this tape on the today show this morning of donald trump describing his relationship with president erdogan of turkey, who crushes dissent in his country. I get along very well with erdogan even though you are not supposed to. Because everyone says but for me it works out good. I can tell you that the relationships i have the tougher and meaner they are the better i get along with them. Youll explain that to me some day. Okay . But maybe its not a bad thing. The easy ones are the ones i dont get along with so much. In an interview with jeffrey goldberg, Lieutenant ColonelAlexander Vindman calls President TrumpVladimir Putins useful idiot. President trump should be considered to be a useful idiot and a fellow traveler, which makes him an unwitting agent of putin. They may or may not have dirt on him, but they dont have to use it. He says they have more effective and less risky ways to employ him. He has aspirations to be the kind of leader that putin is, and so he admires him. He likes authoritarian strongmen who act with impunity, without checks and balances, so hell try to please putin. Vindman continues, in the army we call this free chicken. Something you dont have to work for. It just comes to you. This is what the russians have in trump, free chicken. Heres colonel vindman with lester holt tonight on nbc nightly news. The president suggested you are a never trumper. Are you a never trumper . I joined this administration i joined the president s team. I joined this administration well into this administration with the hopes of being able to do my job, with the hopes of being able to advance u. S. National security interests. I can say that i am now a never trumper. I was not a never trumper before. I was nonpartisan. Regardless of what administration i would just try to do the best i could to advance National Security interests. But i think as the president attacked and politicized me directly and in taking a very sober view of where this president is taking this country, the divisions, the catering to our adversaries, the undermining of National Security interests, that i am absolutely a never trumper. Leading off our discussion is peter strzok. Former fbi counterintelligence agent and the author of the new book compromise compromised Counter Intelligence and the threat of donald j. Trump. Peter strzok, thank you very much for joining us tonight. We really appreciate it. And i want you to take up the question that donald trump just asked. We heard him ask it on audio of Bob Woodwards is explain to him why hes attracted to dictators instead of the leaders of democratic societies, say, in western europe who have been our traditional allies. Well, thats a staggering statement, lawrence. First, thank you for having me. Its great to be here. When you look at the president , who is the leader of the United States, who should be up until this administration the beacon in the free world for democracy, for all the values that we hold as American Values, and to set that example for the world, to be saying Something Like that where he i think at some point he said it is tougher for him to get along with theresa may or angela merkel, it is staggering. It should be the opposite. We shouldnt have a president who is cozying up to dictators, to authoritarians and rather should be promoting American Values rather than embracing those which are antithetical to our own. What about colonel vindmans formulation of donald trump as the useful idiot, as the possibly unwitting agent of Vladimir Putin . No one knows more about Russian Operations like this than you do. That was your specialty at the fbi. Yeah. That has a lot of merit. I mean, look, i recruited people to work for the United States for over 20 years. I have worked against those who were trying to recruit those within the u. S. And there are a ton of motivations. I mean, the big categories of money, ideology, coercion or ego. And the issue is when you look at our president , he has vulnerabilities in each and every one of those areas. So i certainly agree with colonel vindmans observations. And look, this is coming from a man who fled the soviet union with his father and two brothers, who went into the army for a career, who served in wartime, who was wounded in wartime. This is not a partisan statement. Compare that to senator coats, the former director of national intelligence. The 16year senator, a republican senator from indiana. This isnt a partisan issue. This is a National Security issue. And all of us should be paying attention. Lets listen to more about what colonel vindman told lester holt about his view of donald trump and Vladimir Putin. Some people have actually called it kind of a love affair. I think hes at minimum infatuated. And i think hes infatuated with putins power. Hes infatuated with the power of authoritarian leaders that can govern with impunity. As a king in former times that was unaccountable to his people, unaccountable to any other checking force. In our case we have three branches of government purely to establish a balance between them. And the president doesnt appreciate that. The president has a very strong authoritarian streak. Peter strzok, your reaction to that point about the president s authoritarian streak, which we have all seen. Well, i think its absolutely valid. And again, it goes to the point of any professional Intelligence Service is going to try to find and exploit as many vulnerabilities as they can for any individual. So again, when you look at President Trumps demonstrated behavior, the statements he made to bob woodward, he clearly has an affinity somewhere between his ego or something that is drawing him to that behavior on top of what i have written about and talked about extensively about his financial entanglements that also create a vulnerability for coercion. So when you look at the totality of his behavior, from a counterintelligence perspective, thats an absolute nightmare and its something thats not gotten better, hans improved with time and represents a real threat right now as we sit here in 2020. You were part of the Mueller Investigation at the beginning. You werent there at the end. But at the end it turns out they did not pursue any real investigation of Donald Trumps finances, especially the foreign elements of his financing. Was that something you expected at the beginning of the Mueller Investigation would be investigated . Well, i expected the fbi would investigate it. Special counsel muellers mandate was very focused on violations of criminal law. And the team, the results speak for itself. When you look at the scores of charges, indictments, prosecutions, that stands alone. There was always, though, a need to do a counterintelligence look. When i was setting up the team and the fbi component of that, my feeling was that the fbi would absolutely dive into that. Now, i dont know what happened after i left, after i returned to the fbi. It may be going on and it would be appropriate that we dont hear about it. But i am concerned that there doesnt seem to be if that had occurred, i would have expected to see a lot of fighting in courts to prevent the release of financial records. And i have some concern that the sort of robust counterintelligence look may not have occurred, and that concerns me. Peter strzok, the new book is compromised by peter strzok. Thank you very much for starting us off tonight. Really appreciate it. Lawrence, thanks for having me. Thank you. And joining our discussion now is again rhodes, former deputy National Security adviser to president obama. He is an msnbc political analyst. And ben, another day and it turns out today technically three more woodward tapes released, showing donald trump saying this is a killer. He knew that long before he had herman cain sitting there at his last closed last indoor rally before last nights indoor rally. Hes known all this all along. And here is the president still trying to downplay it saying in nevada last night we have turned the corner on the coronavirus. Lawrence, the amazing thing in watching this whole woodward book play out is that having been in the white house for a couple of woodward books and back in the Bush Administration i was the source for a woodward book. Usually, its the reporting that he does around the president that generates the attention. These are things donald trump said that he wanted to say. He felt no shame about saying these things. He felt no shame about saying that he was aware that this was a much more deadly disease than he was saying publicly but he didnt want to play it up, he wanted to play it down. He had no shame about saying that in private to bob woodward this can be a serious disease for young people and say publicly a very different thing. You know, time and again and now we hear him saying this is a killer in april. Time and again, whats astonishing here is that he believes that he can say one thing publicly that is totally counter to the truth, including, as was said, a sense of impunity that there is no accountability for him not only to say extraordinary things like this but to do nothing to try to save the lives of tens of thousands of americans. This is his own words. We dont need any of the background reporting there. And its right there in front of us to render a judgment as the American People and the American Voter is concerned. Ben, bob woodward is going to be here wednesday night. When you mention having been a source in one of his previous books, i had that same experience being a source for bob woodward in a book about the clinton presidency, the first year of the clinton presidency, when basically all of the clinton agenda had to come through the Senate Committee i was working on. Tell the audience what its like when a white house is basically knows that a woodward book is in progress and bob woodward is getting through and talking to just about everyone that has anything important to say about the story bob woodward is trying to find and basically how everyone goes on hyper alert and plans for the discussion with bob woodward as if its going to be a Supreme Court argument. Because what you hear from donald trump is such a casual approach to this conversation which, as bob woodward accurately puts it, is the first draft of history. Yeah. Obviously i was a source for the obama woodward books too. I was helping to coordinate that effort. What i remember dealing with bob woodward is he would focus like a laser on the president. He always wanted to understand the occupant of the oval office. Im sure he was mildly interested in some of the machinations around the president but he really wanted to understand the nature of the president. And he was measuring against the sweep of history. And i think what is so glaring about this book is, look, lawrence, we have to live in the news cycle, we have to deal with these daily outrages. But lets take a step back here. Imagine if several years ago someone told you we would be sitting here talking about a president of the United States who did nothing to prevent the deaths of tens of thousands of people even though he knew that this was a deadly disease and hed been warned this would be the greatest crisis of his presidency. Imagine a president of the United States as bob woodward said whos the face of ame