Washington Post stirs up fury in liberal America over neutral election stance

Failure to endorse any US presidential candidate for first time in decades ‘undermines’ paper’s independence, say critics

Fury and shock ripped through liberal America over the weekend after news that the Washington Post, home of the Watergate scandal exposé, the paper that ran the Pentagon Papers, will not now endorse Kamala Harris for president. But angry responses were quickly replaced by two pressing questions: how did it happen, and how could readers best protest?

At the centre of the storm is William Lewis, the British ­newspaperman who became Washington Post publisher and CEO in January. The 55-year-old north Londoner broke the decision to staff on Friday couched in terms that evoked the title’s traditions.

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Trump bragged about new US nuclear weapons, Woodward tape shows

Former president told Washington Post reporter: ‘We have stuff that Putin and Xi have never heard about before’

In a taped conversation with Bob Woodward, Donald Trump boasted about US nuclear weapons development.

“I have built a weapon system that nobody’s ever had in this country before,” the then president told the veteran Washington Post reporter. “We have stuff that you haven’t even seen or heard about. We have stuff that Putin and Xi have never heard about before.”

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Top general feared Trump would launch nuclear war, Woodward book reports

General Milley worried about Trump’s ‘trigger point’ after the election and monitored him to prevent catastrophic military strike

Before and after the assault on the US Capitol on 6 January, the most senior US general took steps to prevent Donald Trump from “going rogue” and launching a nuclear war or an attack on China, according to excerpts of an eagerly awaited new book by the Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward.

Related: Senate Democrats pitch new voting bill in effort to break filibuster logjam– live

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‘Deep down, he’s a terrified little boy’: Bob Woodward, John Bolton and others on Trump

The authors of recent exposés, including Mary Trump and Anthony Scaramucci, on the president, his time in office – and what they expect to happen at the polls

Bob Woodward is associate editor of the Washington Post and the author of 20 books on American politics. In 50 years as a journalist he has covered nine presidents. His reporting on the Watergate break-in and cover-up with his colleague Carl Bernstein helped bring down Richard Nixon and won the Post a Pulitzer prize. His latest book about Donald Trump, Rage, is based on 10 hours of interviews, spread over 19 taped phone calls, often initiated by the president himself, in which Trump proved “only too willing to blow the whistle on himself”, as the Observer’s review noted.

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Donald Trump falsely claims he didn’t downplay coronavirus pandemic

The president admitted to downplaying the virus in interviews with investigative journalist Bob Woodward

Donald Trump falsely claimed he did not downplay the coronavirus pandemic at a town hall Tuesday night, saying, “Actually, in many ways, I up-played it, in terms of action.”

His remarks came in response to an uncommitted voter at the ABC News event, who asked Trump why he would “downplay a pandemic that is known to disproportionately harm low-income families and minority communities”. The president said he did not minimize the threat of the virus: “My action was very strong. I’m not looking to be dishonest. I don’t want people to panic.”

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Trump aides insist Woodward tapes reveal strong leadership on Covid

The revelation that Donald Trump deliberately downplayed the coronavirus pandemic forced key aides on to desperate defence on Sunday, barely 50 days from the presidential election.

Related: Roger Stone to Donald Trump: bring in martial law if you lose election

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Woodward tells how allies tried to rein in ‘childish’ Trump’s foreign policy

On the golf course, Lindsey Graham urged restraint on Iran, while James Mattis slept in his clothes in case of emergency, book says

Four days before ordering a drone strike against the Iranian military commander Qassem Suleimani, Donald Trump was debating the assassination on his own Florida golf course, according to Bob Woodward’s new book on the mercurial president.

Trump’s golfing partner that day was Senator Lindsey Graham, who had emerged as one of his closest advisers, and who urged him not to take such a “giant step”, that could trigger “almost total war”.

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Joe Biden decries Trump’s ‘almost criminal’ Covid response

  • Democrat tells CNN president ‘waved the white flag’ on virus
  • Trump attacks ABC’s Jon Karl as ‘a disgrace to your employer’

Joe Biden has branded Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic “almost criminal” after book revelations that the US president admitted in early February the disease was “deadly stuff” but deliberately played it down.

As the death toll from Covid-19 nears 200,000 in America, the world’s highest, Biden excoriated his opponent in November’s election over the way he did not address the defining crisis of his presidency early and comprehensively.

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‘I don’t want to create panic’: Trump defends coronavirus remarks he made to Bob Woodward – video

Donald Trump said he was 'trying to avoid panic' by not revealing the severity of Covid-19, despite CNN audio published on Wednesday from an interview in February in which he acknowledged the virus was 'deadly'.

The president, who defended his comments to the journalist Bob Woodward for Woodward's book Rage, insisted his strategy was focused on encouraging Americans to remain calm, as the virus spread across the country

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Trump knew Covid was deadly but wanted to ‘play it down’, Woodward book says

US president gave Bob Woodward 18 interviews, forming basis of new book Rage, and said of virus: ‘This is deadly stuff’

Donald Trump knew the extent of the deadly coronavirus threat in February but intentionally misled the public by deciding to “play it down”, according to interviews recorded by one of America’s most venerated investigative journalists.

The US president gave Bob Woodward 18 interviews between December 2019 and July 2020. They form the basis of his revelatory new book, Rage, obtained on Wednesday by the Washington Post and CNN, in which Trump is condemned by his own words.

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Bob Woodward obtains letters between Trump and Kim Jong-un for new book Rage

Bob Woodward’s second book on the Trump White House has a title, Rage, and promises to reveal the secrets of “25 personal letters exchanged between [Donald] Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un that have not been public before”.

Related: It Was All a Lie review: Trump as symptom not cause of Republican decline

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