Despite Donald Trump's continued dominance in national polls, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Bob Woodward said Wednesday that the billionaire developer will not become the Republican presidential nominee because he is "not Reaganesque in many ways."
"The Republican Party is looking for somebody who's like Reagan," Woodward, associate editor for The Washington Post, told
Jake Tapper on CNN. "You talk to Republicans, they all love Reagan.
"Donald Trump is not Reaganesque in many ways — and the party would gravitate towards somebody who can win," he added. "And the polls show [Marco] Rubio and [John] Kasich if they ran and won Ohio and Florida, no Democrat could beat them.
"So Republicans are going to want to win, obviously," Woodward said.
Woodward, whose new book is
"The Last of the President's Men," said that most of Trump's supporters are "no votes."
"I think a lot of those Trump supporters are 'no votes,'" he told Tapper. "They're voting 'no' against politics in Washington and what's going on. It's a protest.
"Is that going to bring people to the polls?" he posed. "We'll see."
Woodward, however, said that the biggest questions facing a Trump candidacy for voters are "do we understand who Trump really is — and is he in touch with reality?"
He then referenced
Trump's vow in an August interview on NBC's "Meet the Press" to reverse President Barack Obama's executive orders on immigration and deport all illegals out of the United States.
"This 'I'm going to deport 11 million people out of this country' — do you have any idea the logistics of doing that?" Woodward asked. "It's impossible."
Regarding Vice President
Joe Biden's announcement that he would not challenge Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination, Woodward called it "a sensible decision."
"I think at one point, he wanted to run. And then he was undecided — and then, this is where he landed," he told Tapper. "It's probably a sensible decision for him, but it gives the nomination to Hillary Clinton for all practical purposes."