Bob Woodward is the deep-state shill that just won’t go away. Famous for being the supposed journalistic genius who revealed the Watergate scandal, taking down Richard Nixon, the reality is that Woodward was fed the story by Mark Felt, the then-Deputy FBI Director.
Naturally, we are supposed to believe Woodward’s sudden rise from an obscure suburban newspaper to being the Post’s top investigative man was all a coincidence. You know, because former Pentagon couriers who were so bad at journalism that they got demoted typically have top sources at the FBI.
But I digress, Woodward has been living off that success ever since, parlaying it into a series of stories and books over the years. His reputation, undeserved as it may be, has garnered the access needed to keep the ball rolling. Donald Trump recently fell into that trap, giving Woodward multiple interviews for a book that was then used to trash the former president as an “unparalleled danger.” Perhaps one day, a lesson will be learned.
Now, Woodward is trying to differentiate himself from his press colleagues regarding the Russia collusion hoax.
Veteran journalist Bob Woodward revealed in a new interview that Washington Post reporters essentially ignored his warnings about the shortcomings of the infamous Christopher Steele dossier, amidst the feverish Russiagate media coverage that dominated the Trump administration.
In a lengthy report for Columbia Journalism Review, Jeff Gerth interviewed media and political figures wrapped up in Russiagate – the sweeping term for the allegations of Trump-Russia collusion in the 2016 election – including Donald Trump himself, finding in particular where the media went wrong. Woodward, one of the reporters famous for breaking the Watergate scandal for the Washington Post, told Gerth that viewers and readers had been “cheated” by the coverage.
“Bob Woodward, of the Post, told me that news coverage of the Russia inquiry ‘wasn’t handled well’ and that he thought viewers and readers had been ‘cheated.’ He urged newsrooms to ‘walk down the painful road of introspection,'” Gerth wrote.
Nothing Woodward does is by chance, and he’s not just throwing this out there because he wants to set the record straight on Donald Trump and Russia. He’s an egomaniac and wants to be seen as above the fray.
But was Woodward really above the fray? In some ways, he did cast more doubt on the Russia collusion hoax than others. Yet, he still promoted Robert Mueller as “having something” on Trump, suggesting there was a “secret witness.” He also encouraged reporters to go to Moscow to find evidence Trump colluded with the Russians. Obviously, he wasn’t immune from baseless hysteria surrounding the topic even if he did his best to seem more reserved while pushing it.
So what’s this really about? I think it’s a continuation of Woodward’s career arc, which has always been an effort to protect government bureaucracies, most notably the FBI and CIA. Yes, the media deserves a ton of blame for pushing the Russia collusion hoax, but at the end of the day, the sourcing for that hoax was coming almost exclusively from inside the intelligence agencies. They are the ones who gave the Steele Dossier credibility and mindlessly leaked about it and the investigations into Trump and Russia for years on end. The fourth estate’s coverage was reliant on the deep state.
Woodward wants to gloss over that, simply accusing the media of being overzealous. And while they were, the most important and dangerous aspect of the situation wasn’t what The New York Times wrote. It was how the government was weaponized to try to take down a president. If Woodward were really the journalist he claims to be, he’d be a lot more interested in that than trying to pass the buck.