Woodward Asks Trump About Race Relations in America; Trump often Belittled Black Women in Politics; Trump Admits Misleading Country About Coronavirus; U.S. Financial Markets Reverse Three-Day Slide
ROBYN CURNOW CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back. Live from Atlanta, I'm Robyn Curnow. So, as we told you at the top of our newscast, Bob Woodward's new book, it's called "Rage," paints a pretty unflattering portrait of the President. And Woodward's sources are not anonymous. One of them is the President himself. An extensive on the record interviews over many, many months. Now one of the sensitive issues Woodward raised with him was racial unrest in the country. Brian Todd has that part of the story. Brian.</s>BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Bob Woodward put the question bluntly to President Trump. In one of the interviews he did with the President for his new book, "Rage," the investigative journalist asked Trump whether the white privilege he experienced in his youth put him in a cave. Isolated him.</s>BOB WOODWARD, JOURNALIST, AUTHOR, RAGE: It put me, and I think lots of white, privileged people in a cave. And that we have to work our way out of it to understand the anger and the pain, particularly black people feel in this country. Do you --</s>DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: No, you really drank the Kool-Aid, didn't you? Just listen to you. Wow. No, I don't feel that at all.</s>TODD: In one conversation with Woodward, Trump escalated his contempt for former President Barack Obama saying, quote -- I don't think Obama's smart. I think he is highly overrated. And I don't think he is a great speaker. Trump told Woodward he often wanted to refer to Obama by his first and middle name. Barack Hussein, but that he would not do that in his presence so that he could be quote, very nice.</s>APRIL RYAN, CNN POLITICAL ANALIST: He started his politics on trying to delegitimize the first black president of the United States. But at the end of the day, it's more than just that. There is a personal angst against President Obama.</s>TODD: Many of the president's divisive comments have been directed toward black women in leadership. He tweeted that the four congresswomen of color who formed the so-called squad on Capitol Hill should quote -- Go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. He has referred to Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Waters as having a quote, low I.Q. One of his new favorite targets, Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris.</s>TRUMP: She could never be the first woman president. She could never be. That would be an insult to our country.</s>DAN BALZ, CHIEF CORRESPONDENT, WASHINGTON POST: Certainly, in his presidency he has used race as a divisive issue. He has played to white voters and not to the entire country.</s>TODD: The President apparently doesn't see it that way. Telling Bob Woodward quote, I have done a tremendous amount for the black community, and honestly, I'm not feeling any love. Some who've known Donald Trump for decades believe racially polarizing comments are more than a political tool for the president. Former Trump lawyer, Michael Cohen, also out with a new book, told NBC News of a conversation he had with Trump after Nelson Mandela died.</s>MICHAEL COHEN, PRESIDENT TRUMP'S FORMER ATTORNEY: He asked me if I had known of any country that's run by a black that is not an s-hole. And I said well, how about America? In which he gave me the proverbial f- you.</s>TODD: A former COO of one of Trump's hotels believes it goes even deeper.</s>JACK O'DONNELL, FORMER PRESIDENT AND COO, TRUMP PLAZA HOTEL AND CASINO: Cohen's description, his characterization -- that Trump believes blacks have a lower intelligence. It's absolutely true. He said these things 30 years ago.</s>TODD (on camera): We reached out to the White House for response to our story. White House spokesman Judd Deere issued this statement quote -- The individuals you cite have slandered the President. Verbally attacked his supporters and covered his administration with animosity, bias and lies. And he will not sit by and allow this hateful rhetoric to go on responded to. Donald Trump's record as a private citizen and as President has been one of fighting for inclusion and advocating for the equal treatment of all. Anyone who suggests otherwise is only seeking to sow division and ignore the president's work for underserved communities. Judd Deere also cited the President's work on criminal justice reform, in creating opportunity zones and in funding historically black colleges and universities. Brian Todd, CNN, Washington.</s>CURNOW: So earlier I spoke with CNN political commentator and "New York Times" columnist Charles Blow about the President's dismal comments on race. You heard many of them there in that report. But first I also just wanted to get his take on Mr. Trump's early knowledge on the coronavirus. We've been reporting it all day. And the decision not to make that information public. Take a listen to what Charles said.</s>CHARLES BLOW, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: It is criminal. You're responsible for people dying and the reason that you did it was because you wanted to put yourself in a better position to be reelected. There is no way to describe what is happening here. And we keep talking about it in political terms, we continue to talk about it in attitudinal terms, rather than talk about it in terms of actual human beings who were alive, walking around on this earth breathing air are now in graves. And there are 190,000 of them and people -- and the experts predicted it would be 200,000 of them by the end of the month. And the models show it can get active one week sooner, we would have saved thousands of lives. If we acted two weeks, we could have even more tens of thousands of lives. And the fact that he knew how dangerous it was. H knew the transmission rate -- the path of transmission. He knew how much more deadly it was than the flu which he kept comparing it to. He knew that children could be affected and were being affected. And he said things that went against what he knew because he thought it was better for him. It's outrageous. I don't know how we get over that. All of the people who've had to deal with funerals, I've been to too many Zoom funerals. Why do I have to go to a Zoom funeral? Because this man chose to conceal this and to downplay it so that the people had to die. And we had to watch the funeral on a screen. That is not how it should have been. These people did not have to die.</s>CURNOW: Those comments are not the only comments that have come out in this Bob Woodward book and those tapes. We also hear how Bob Woodward himself tries to grapple with his white privilege and the President kind of disdainfully says, well, you've drunk the Kool-Aid. What does it feel like to hear that? I mean, and are you surprised?</s>BLOW: No, I'm not surprised that he believes that there's actually a privilege in blackness because he believes that affirmative action and political correctness give minorities an advantage. He's believed this for his entire life. He gave an interview in 1989, that's 31 years ago, in which he said that a highly educated black person has an advantage over a highly educated white person and if he had to do it over, he might choose to be a highly educated black person. He said that in jest, he laughs. Of course, he doesn't want to be that. But he has always believed that we were getting something for free, that we were -- that there was an advantage over whiteness because the society felt guilty and they were giving black people things. Right? And so, he doesn't believe in the concept of white privilege.</s>CURNOW: Charles Blow there speaking to me a little bit earlier on. So, U.S. financial markets bounced back in a big way on Wednesday. Take a look. U.S. stocks had their best day in months after a three- day slide. Tech stocks including Apple, Amazon, Microsoft helped lead the charge. Now the Dow gained 1.6 percent as you can see here, all firmly in the green territory. The Nasdaq saw its quickest correction ever, with a 2.7 percent surge. And then the S&P finished up more than 2 percent. So, where will the markets go from here? John Defterios is live this hour in Abu Dhabi. John, hi. Is this extreme level of volatility we're seeing in global financial, it really is pretty extreme, but it's particularly acute here in the U.S. why?</s>JOHN DEFTERIOS, CNN BUSINESS EMERGING MARKETS EDITOR: Well, you know what, I think the best way to describe this kind of phenomena is a whiplash in the financial markets. Robyn, and you are correct.</s>CURNOW: But all of 2020 is a whiplash. So, I think we can agree on that.</s>DEFTERIOS: Yes, that's for sure. But you know, we have a couple of forces at play here in the financial market which makes this even more volatile. Right? Record amounts of stimulus, $11 trillion worldwide, about 3 trillion in the United States. But we're going into recession so what force wins the gain in the financial markets? There's a couple of different measurements. I think we have this in two charts that kind of describe the story or the narrative for the year. First, the Dow Industrials with the Nasdaq Composite Index. You have this sharp drop in March. We bottomed out in April and then went higher again. That was all about the stimulus. And let's take a look at the Nasdaq on its own because it recently had a record. We start the year at 8,900, Robyn. Dropped down to 6,800 in April and then we climb up above 12,000 and then you saw Tuesday a sharp jolt again. So, you say, what's going on? Goldman Sachs recently put out a report saying it's very unusual we are today because you have to go back to 2000 and the tech bubble when you see near records or records and really high levels of the VIX index which measures volatility. Again, we've seen this VIX index nearly double in the last year and it's a red warning sign according to Goldman Sachs. We haven't been there for 20 years. We know what happened 20 years ago and, again, we have more volatility today. If you look at the futures market, 2/3 of a percent with the Dow and S&P 500. And the Nasdaq is down another 1 percent. So, what do I say? Buyer beware.</s>CURNOW: OK. Warnings all around. John Defterios thanks so much for that. So, you're watching CNN. Still ahead, she's covered conflicts and crises around the world including Syria. Well now CNN's Clarissa Ward shares her experiences in a new memoir. We'll speak with Carissa next.