Just interviewed Bob Woodward about criticism regarding the timing of his scoop about President Trump's acknowledged downplaying of the coronavirus. 1/

Addressing only issues of process, Woodward said that when Trump talked about coronavirus -- "deadly stuff" -- in their Feb. 7 interview, he (Woodward) didn't know where Trump was getting his information, whether it was true, and so on. 2/

It took him three months to nail down all the reporting about what Trump knew about coronavirus, when he learned it and how all that related to the public pronouncements he was making. It wasn't until May that he put those pieces together. 3/

Asked directly whether earlier publication of his interviews would have saved lives, Woodward responded, "No! How?" He pointed out that Trump made that comment on March 19, and he had already made an Oval Office address on March 11. Confirmed cases were taking off. 4/

Woodward did say that if anything he gathered was a legitimate public health issue, he would have gone to The Post and sought to have it published forthwith. "It wasn't. It wasn't," he told me. 5/

His goal all along over the course of the 10-month project was to get the reporting to the public in time for the November elections. "What's the demarcation line? The election," he says. 6/

Woodward publishes his exclusives in The Post, where he has the title of associate editor. He draws a monthly salary of twenty-five dollars. 7/