Monday on CNN’s “The Lead, ” veteran reporter Bob Woodward said President Donald Trump was intentionally “stoking the fires” of political rage.

Host Jake Tapper asked. “You think that he purposely manifests the rage, channels the rage, incites the rage among supporters?”

Woodward answered, “Well, he says so. And when he blames the media, when he goes out in these rallies, they are all designed to raise the boiling point, raise the temperature, and that is contributing. We know presidents have extraordinary power. He has probably more power than any president I’ve reported on, going back to Nixon. And he has seized it with the communication channel, with the tweeting and the rallies and the press conferences. And, you know, he’s out two or three times every day, saying something. And so the news media follows it, rightly so. And to summarize, having spent two years on this in the book, we’re being had, because he’s doing things to distract us from all of the big policy decisions that he’s gambling on.”

He added, “We have to look at what he does and what he’s doing here. It’s in plain sight, and let’s not kid ourselves. He’s stoking the fires, and that serves his political purposes in his view. In Charlottesville last year, when he gave the speech saying, you know, we need to love each other after trying to come down from the first version. He went ballistic, saying ‘That was the biggest mistake I ever made in my life. Never show weakness. Never.’ He wants to have this volatility in politics and he succeeded.”

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