No former president has ever had as much political power as Donald Trump, thanks to the "obedience" of the Republicans, said Bob Woodward, the American journalist and writer who exposed the Watergate scandal with his colleague, in an interview with CNN on Monday night, American time. .
The publicist best known for his series of articles and books documenting and processing the Watergate scandal, which he wrote together with Carl Bernstein for almost half a century, cited Iowa Republican Senator Chuck Grassley as an example of how, as he put it, "obedient behavior" of some Republicans is with Trump. Grassley appeared alongside Donald Trump at a rally in Iowa over the weekend.
"What you see now is an iron curtain of obedience around Trump," Woodward opined. He explained that, in his opinion, “this is not simply polite deference, but obedience. And it's really like an iron curtain, because it's so strong." As he put it: "these people, like Senator Grassley, can count. They look at surveys. They go home to their member states and talk to the voters. And there, of course, tens of millions of people support Trump".
Chuck Grassley, who is seeking another Senate seat in the midterm elections next year, assured Trump of his "full support" at Saturday's rally.
The 88-year-old senator later said he "wouldn't be very smart" not to "accept the endorsement of the man who has 91 percent of Iowa's Republican electorate."
Ahead of Saturday's rally, a Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll showed Donald Trump's approval rating in Iowa is now higher than at any time as an incumbent. In addition, his support among Republicans was much higher (91 percent) than that of Senator Grassley (81 percent).
According to Woodward, Trump's continued popularity among Republicans is also due to his almost constant campaigning.
Although the former president has not yet officially announced that he intends to run in the 2024 US presidential election, he has previously hinted at it, and since his defeat in 2020, he has been holding rallies, where he often repeats his claims that he "cheated, stole" the last election. President Joe Biden.
"This is a level of political power that we've rarely seen, or rather, never seen from a previous president," Woodward emphasized. “After Nixon resigned, he stopped going to rallies. Rather, he declared war on history to prove that the Watergate scandal was just a small blip," said Woodward, who is also a senior contributor to The Washington Post.
"Let's face the facts! "Trump's popularity and power within the Republican Party have increased, not decreased, since he left the presidency," the writer-journalist stated.
Since 2018, Woodward has written three books about Donald Trump's presidency. The most recent one, titled "Peril" and made together with journalist Robert Costa, was published in September. The volume chronicles the final months of the Trump presidency, including his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, and the early days of the Biden administration.
MTI
Photo: REUTERS/Gaelen Morse
