At his final campaign rally for the US mid-term elections in Ohio, Donald Trump raised expectations he will announce a future presidential bid as soon as Tuesday next week.
Veteran US journalist Bob Woodward told 7.30 that if Mr Trump were to win the presidency again he would demand loyalty akin to a "blood oath".
“What we would see in a second Trump term would be the appointment of absolute sworn loyalists to White House positions,” he said.
Woodward spoke to 7.30 about the release of The Trump Tapes audiobook — a collection of 20 interviews with the former president. The interviews formed the basis of his three recent bestselling books, Fear, Rage, and Peril.
LIVE UPDATES: Early results emerge as Democrats and Republicans vie for control of CongressWoodward said he made the decision to release the recordings because hearing Trump's voice was completely different to reading his words on the page.
"You hear his voice, you hear his thunder, his … self-satisfaction, often his smugness, and when you hear that it notches up in, I think, a very important way your understanding of who he is and the extent to which, quite frankly, he does not understand the job of president of the United States, because he's always so focused on himself," he said.
'Everything is mine'
In one exchange, seeking details of how Trump’s speeches were written, Trump responded with chilling bombast.
“The ideas are mine, Bob. The ideas are mine. Want to know something? Everything is mine.”
Woodward was part of the celebrated journalistic duo responsible for exposing the political crimes of Richard Nixon in the Watergate affair. He says even Nixon didn’t display arrogance at the level he witnessed with Trump.
“I never heard any of the 10 presidents I’ve written about, including Nixon on his secret taping system, there is often an arrogance on the part of Nixon or other presidents but the idea ‘everything is mine’, it’s not.”
Woodward believes Trump is motivated by hate.
"I think Trump hates anyone who opposes him, or is the opposition," he said.
"And the emotion, I mean, out of his own mouth, [it's] hate. And that's such an ugly driver of politics.
"When Nixon resigned in 1974, he memorably said, 'Always remember, others may hate you, but those who hate you don't win, unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself.'"
The veteran Washington observer warns that hatred is a “continuing poison” in American politics.
'He has learned where the levers of power are'
The audio tapes were recorded in interviews at the White House, Trump's Florida residence Mar-a-Lago, by phone on Air Force 1 and random phone calls to Woodward's house.
Trump told Woodward he believed the journalist in the end would "screw him" as he suggested Woodward had done in his books about President George Bush: "Bush sat with you for hours and you screwed him … I ain't no Bush".
The release of the tapes coincides with America's mid-term elections. In the event of a Republican victory, Woodward predicts they will shut down the investigation into Trump's role in the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol.
Despite evidence that Trump may have violated the constitution and the law, returning to the prospect of a second Trump presidency, Woodward told 7.30 "he has learned where the levers of power are."
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