Trump saved MBS after Khashoggi killing: Woodward's book

Bob Woodward's upcoming book has poured shocking revelations merely two months before the US presidential elections. The book has come up with three major revelations -- Donald Trump saved MBS after the Khashoggi killing, he undermined the coronavirus threat and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un gave the president a graphic account of how he had his own uncle killed.

Hyderabad: US President Donald Trump had protected the Saudi Crown prince after veteran Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi was brutally killed by Riyadh agents, a new book said.

Veteran American journalist Bob Woodward's new book 'Rage' said that Trump bragged that he protected the Saudi crown prince from consequences in the United States after the assassination of Khashoggi in October 2018, Al Jazeera reported.

Revelations from veteran American journalist Bob Woodward's book Rage.

"I saved his ***," Trump said about the US outcry after Khashoggi's killing, according to Business Insider, quoting from a copy of Woodward's book.

Veteran Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward's new book about President Donald Trump is titled “Rage” and will be released September 15, less than two months before Election Day, according to a listing on Amazon.com.

Publisher Simon & Schuster says the forthcoming book follows “Trump’s moves as he faces a global pandemic, economic disaster and racial unrest.” It says Woodward conducted a series of exclusive interviews with the president.

The Amazon listing also notes that Woodward obtained 25 personal letters between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, including one in which Kim describes their bond as something out of a “fantasy film.”

Woodward's book, which comes out next week, draws from 18 conversations with Trump between December and July. During his AP interview, Woodward said Trump called him “out of the blue” in early February to “unburden himself" about the virus, which then had few cases in the U.S. But Woodward said that only in May was he satisfied that Trump's comments were based on reliable information and that by then the virus had spread nationwide.

"If I had done the story at that time about what he knew in February, that's not telling us anything we didn't know," Woodward said. At that point, he said, the issue was no longer one of public health but of politics. His priority became getting the story out before the election in November.

“That was the demarcation line for me,” he said. “Had I decided that my book was coming out on Christmas, the end of this year, that would have been unthinkable.”

Asked why he didn't share Trump's February remarks for a fellow Post reporter to pursue, Woodward said he had developed “some pretty important sources” on his own.

“Could I have brought others in? Could they have done things I couldn't do?" he asked. “I was on the trail, and I was (still) on the trail when it (the virus) exploded.”

Woodward's first book about the Trump presidency, “Fear,” was published in 2018 and went to No. 1 on The New York Times' nonfiction bestseller list. Simon & Schuster was the publisher of two books this year that were harshly critical of Trump: “The Room Where It Happened,” by former national security adviser John Bolton, and “Too Much and Never Enough,” by Trump's niece Mary Trump.