NEW YORK (Dagbladet): The Trump Tapes audiobook will be out next week. Contains eight hours of conversations between Trump and famed journalist Bob Woodward.
Woodward interviewed Trump 19 times in 2019 and 2020, when Trump was president. The conversations were included in Woodward’s best-selling book on the Trump administration, “Rage”.
In connection with the interviews, Trump shared the exchange of letters with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un. He also admits that he knew they were classified.
– So top secret
– Nobody else has them, but I want you to treat them with respect. And don’t say I gave them to you, okay? Trump says about Kim’s letters in the December 2019 recording, according to CNN And Washington Post.
In January 2020, Woodward asked to also see what Trump had written to Kim.
– Oh, they’re so top secret, Trump replied.
Ballistic Missiles Launched: – Serious provocation
This is in stark contrast to the comments the former president has made so far about the confidential documents that have been seized in Mar-a-Lago.
– In retrospect, Trump’s comment shows that he was fully aware that the 27 letters he and Kim exchanged were confidential, despite repeatedly claiming that none of the documents he brought from the White House fell into that category, writes the Washington Post.
American judicial authorities and national archives have spent a long time since Trump stepped down as president in January 2021 to obtain confidential documents that Trump is said to have brought home to Florida, including exchanging letters with Kim.
Research
In August, the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago. They seized hundreds of documents marked as classified and about 11,000 documents that were not.
Everything is now part of a criminal investigation into the former president, who risks being charged with these issues.
This is what “love letters” are like.
The exchange of letters with Kim was part of Trump’s attempt to mitigate the nuclear threat from North Korea.
The letters reveal, among other things, that Trump seems to have an admiration for the leader of one of the most closed and repressive regimes in the world. In the letters, the two heads of state exchange, among other things, birthday wishes and wishes to friends and relatives, according to The Guardian.
Woodward, who first became famous for his Watergate revelations in the 1970s, has interviewed Trump several times.
He tells the Washington Post – the newspaper he’s still associated with – that Trump allowed him to handle Kim’s letters to the White House while one of Trump’s associates was present. According to Woodward, the documents were not marked as classified at the time.
Kim’s flirt joke: – Get one for the team
– Dangerous
– The informal and dangerous way in which Trump manages the most secret programs and information, we see now in 2022 in Mar-a-Lago where he had 184 confidential documents, including 25 marked as top secret, Woodward says in a comment in the audiobook.
Among other things, he refers to the comments Trump made to him during interviews.
– I have built weapon systems that no one else in this country has ever had before. We have things you haven’t even seen or heard. We have things Putin and Xi (Jinping journ. Note) have never heard of before, Trump bragged during interviews with Woodward.
The well-known journalist also explains why he now chooses to publish all interviews in audiobook form.
– I’m doing here something I’ve never done before, presenting the long, raw interviews of my work. For the sake of the story, I wanted to include Trump’s voice as much as possible, his own words, so that people can hear and make their own judgments, Woodward explains in the introduction to the audiobook, according to NTB.