Donald Trump claimed Friday that investigative journalist Bob Woodward recorded multiple interviews with the former president that appear in Woodward’s upcoming audiobook “belong” to Trump. .
“I’ve already hired a lawyer to sue him,” Trump said Friday on Fox News host Brian Kilmeade’s radio show. “Bob Woodward is a very vulgar man,” he added of the famous Watergate journalist.
Woodward’s audiobook, “The Trump Tapes: Bob Woodward’s Twenty Interviews with President Trump,” will be released on Tuesday. It includes over eight hours of twenty interviews with journalist Trump over the years, interspersed with Woodward’s comments.
Trump appeared to acknowledge that Woodward had installed the tape to record the interview, but insisted that the rights to use the tape belonged to him.
“In many ways, I like the tape. I claim the tape, but I also say the tape is mine,” Trump told Kilmeade. “That means Woodward has to take back whatever deal he made. We’ll probably end up in a lawsuit over it because it’s not a tape to sell, it’s written. It’s because we provided the tape for the words, and it’s always been clear,” he said.
Trump told Woodward, “These tapes are for the written word, and these tapes are for your word. [previous] Books, these are not for sale. These are the tapes for your book, to help you out. I like it because it’s more accurate,” he added.
“I’m going to sue him because he’s making an audiobook out of it,” Trump said.
Woodward could not be reached for comment.
Some revelations from Woodward’s book have already been told in media that have obtained advance copies.
In one of his 2019 interviews, Trump admitted that a letter from North Korean leader Kim Jong-un that was seized from his Mar-a-Lago complex in August was “top secret.” , reported the Washington Post. Nevertheless, he showed them off to Woodward. “Don’t tell me I gave it to you, okay?” Trump can be heard saying on tape.
In another recording from a 2020 interview with Woodward, Trump said he prefers “tougher and meaner” world leaders.
“I like Putin,” Trump told Woodward, CNN reported after obtaining an advance copy of the audiobook.
“It’s good to get along with Russia, not bad, right? Especially since they have 1,332 nuclear fucking warheads,” he told journalists.
This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.
