Woodward accused of putting book sales before health

Who told him－US President Donald Trump－to grant the interviews and why did he?

And should he－Bob Woodward－have reported earlier Trump's admission that he intentionally downplayed the coronavirus threat in the spring to avoid panic?

Those questions were being explored on social media on Thursday, the day after CNN and The Washington Post reported excerpts from Woodward's new book, Rage. The book, to be published on Tuesday, is based in part on 18 interviews that Woodward conducted with Trump between December last year and this July.

On Wednesday, Trump didn't deny telling Woodward what is in the book, but he called it "another hatchet job".

Fox News host Tucker Carlson said Trump should never have agreed to the interviews. He blamed Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina for encouraging Trump to speak to Woodward.

Graham told The Daily Beast that he did recommend Trump speak with the veteran Post journalist. He said he told the president: "You got a chance to tell your side of the story."

Trump learned about that last book－Fear－and called Woodward in frustration, the Post reported at the time. "I would have loved to have spoken to you," he said in an audio released by the newspaper then.

Woodward on Wednesday faced criticism from fellow journalists for not reporting earlier that Trump had admitted withholding from the public the severity of the virus. Some accused him of valuing book sales over public health.

"Nearly 200,000 Americans have died because neither Donald Trump nor Bob Woodward wanted to risk anything substantial to keep the country informed," wrote Esquire magazine's Charles P. Pierce on Twitter.

John Stanton, the former Washington bureau chief for BuzzFeed, wrote in a tweet: "There is no ethical or moral defense of Woodward's decision to not publish these tapes as soon as they were made."

Jessica Huseman, a reporter for ProPublica, tweeted: "How differently might Trump's supporters have acted if－this whole time－they knew that he knew COVID was a serious threat? Woodward could have made that happen in February."

Two journalists at the Post defended Woodward.

David Maraniss, an investigative journalist and associate editor, tweeted that "the argument that lives might have been saved had (Woodward) reported this earlier is ahistorical."

Erik Wemple, a Post media critic, said the president might never have made the remarks to Woodward if he thought they would show up hours or days after he said them.

In interviews on Wednesday, Woodward defended not reporting earlier what Trump said.

He told The Associated Press he needed time to ensure that Trump's remarks were accurate."He tells me this, and I'm thinking, 'Wow, that's interesting, but is it true?'" he said.

He said Trump called him "out of the blue" in early February to "unburden himself" about the virus, which then had few cases in the US. But he said that only in May he was satisfied that Trump's comments were based on reliable information.