'What the f*** happened to America?' Bob Woodward says that's what historians will be asking when they study the Trump era

 Journalist Bob Woodward suggested historians would react to the Trump era of American politics with bewilderment and four-letter words. 

'The historians I know are going to be writing about this for decades and they're going to say, "What the F happened to America in 2016, 2019 and 2020?"' Woodward told CNN's Jeff Zucker Tuesday as part of the network's Citizen by CNN conference. 

Woodward, the famed Watergate journalist who's covered nine administrations, said he had 'never seen anything like' Trump bungling's of the coronavirus pandemic, with 200,000-plus Americans dead as of Tuesday. 

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Journalist Bob Woodward said Tuesday that historians are going to look at the Trump era and ask, 'What the F happened to America in 2016, 2019 and 2020?' 

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Bob Woodward (right) sat down with CNN's Jeff Zucker (left) as part of the Citizen by CNN conference on Tuesday. He spoke of President Donald Trump's mishandling of the pandemic

'The visitation of the medical nightmare on the American population is staggering, stunning,' Woodward said. 

He also said Trump should be blamed. 

'It's on his head, and he did not do enough. He just didn't,' Woodward said. 

The best-selling author made it a lot more difficult for Trump to plead ignorance, as Trump is on-the-record with Woodward in early February talking about how dangerous COVID-19 is. 

In their recorded talks, Trump tells Woodward that Chinese President Xi Jinping told him that the virus is airborne, highly contagious and much deadlier than the common flu. 

A month later when talking to Woodward, Trump admits he purposely downplayed it, explaining he didn't want to cause 'panic.' 

Democrats have interpreted that as Trump not wanting to panic the stock market, which has become his barometer for the country's economic health. 

Woodward turned to Watergate, describing Republican President Richard Nixon as a 'criminal' who was driven out by his own party. 'His people used to say no one died in Watergate and there's a certain truth to that,' Woodward said. 

Meanwhile, Woodward pointed out '200,000 people have died at this' and Trump couldn't even take 'remedial action by being honest with the American people.' 

And Woodward's tapes spell that out. 

'As a reporter for The New York Times said, it's almost, in the case of Trump, as if Nixon had packaged up all his secret tape recordings showing his criminality and FedEx'ed them to me,' Woodward said.  

The longtime journalist also commented on the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and how it impacts the American people's reaction to Trump's handling of the coronavirus pandemic. 

'We see now with the Supreme Court issue he's shifted the spotlight,' Woodward said, according to The Hill. 'He's absolutely delighted - this is an issue that's very important to his base, to Evangelicals. So the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburgh is one of these events in history that has changed the entire dynamic.'