Bob Woodward

Fox News Thanks God that WH Aides are Preventing Crazytown Trump From Really Screwing Up

Posted by on September 4, 2018 at 5:18 pm. 2 Comments :

If you weren’t afraid before, get ready to be scared out of your wits. Excerpts are being released from Bob Woodward’s new book, Fear: Trump in the White House, by Bob Woodward, that confirm some of the worst horror stories to emerge from the presidency of Donald Trump. The book’s title could not be more appropriate.

Donald Trump Zombie

Among the revelations that Woodward is reporting are some that have been disclosed previously. For instance, Trump’s chief of staff, John Kelly, has a less than flattering opinion of Trump’s intellectual capacity. He is reported to have called him an “idiot” who it is pointless to talk to. And he describes the White House as “Crazytown.” That would put Kelly in agreement with Trump’s former secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, who called Trump a “moron.” Not surprisingly, Trump is already refuting the credibility of the book’s assertions. But credibility is not the hallmark of Trump’s tenure in the White House. The Washington Post has his documented lies in office up to 4,700+ so far. That’s an average of fifteen per day.

However, Fox News was discussing a part of the book that described the way some of Trump’s aides deal with his “off the rails” outbursts and inclinations that pose imminent danger to the nation. And the comments by Fox’s senior analyst, Brit Hume, tell a terrifying tale of Trump going “right up to edge” of potential oblivion (video below):

“What you see here, in at least the excerpts we’ve seen from the book, is this volcanic president who [inaudible] about himself in the most demeaning ways to the people around him. Walks right up to edge of what would be incredibly disastrous decisions all the time. Prepared to do this, that, and the other thing. Restrained apparently, ultimately, by aides around him much of the time. There’s an account in there of a document he’s about to sign and they came in and took it off his desk.

“So what does that say to the people in the ‘Never Trump’ movement, particularly on the right, who don’t think the people who are serving in the Trump administration should do so because it participates in this fiasco of a presidency? It seems to me the lesson that comes away from this is: Thank God for the people around Trump who are keeping him on the straight and narrow to the extent they can. That’s a service to the country, it seems to me, without question.”

This description of life in Trump’s White House couldn’t be more disturbing. Hume paints him as a “volcanic” figure who is “demeaning” to his staff. He seems perpetually on the verge of making “disastrous decisions” in his “fiasco” of a presidency. Presumably that exempts the decisions that he has actually gotten away with so far. And the only thing that has prevented these calamities is that his staff has literally stolen documents off his desk to keep him from doing more harm.

If that’s not bad enough, Hume seems to think that the presence of unelected aides who are willing to deceive and manipulate the commander-in-chief is a good thing. Oh yeah. It is so comforting to know that our president is a flaming mental case with the capacity to destroy the nation – or the world – but for some hangers-on who throw the wool over his eyes. Isn’t that exactly what all Americans want from their national leadership? Trump, in this scenario, is Fox News’ idea of the realization of the American Dream. Hallelujah!

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Bob Woodward IS Going To Regret Making An Ass Of Himself

Posted by on February 28, 2013 at 10:53 am. 9 Comments :

For almost a week now Fox News and their rightist comrades have been giddily singing the praises of Bob Woodward, someone they ordinarily denounce as a minion of Satan. The reason for this new found worship is that Woodward has taken to satisfying Fox’s never-ending craving for sound bites that portray President Obama as a thug.

Woodward has made a very public showing of what he has characterized as a threat. He asserted that a “very senior person” in the administration delivered an ominous warning that “You will regret doing this.” He went on to say “It makes me very uncomfortable to have the White House telling reporters, you’re going to regret doing something.”

The White House disputed the inference Woodward was making and he was eventually compelled to release the emails that he said were the source of the alleged threat. As so often occurs, Woodward was obviously being hyper-sensitive and his comments about the exchange bear little resemblance to reality. No wonder Fox News pounced on it. Misrepresentation of reality is their forte. Here is what the actual email from White House Economic Council Director Gene Sperling said:

“I do truly believe you should rethink your comment about saying saying that Potus asking for revenues is moving the goal post. I know you may not believe this, but as a friend, I think you will regret staking out that claim. The idea that the sequester was to force both sides to go back to try at a big or grand barain with a mix of entitlements and revenues (even if there were serious disagreements on composition) was part of the DNA of the thing from the start.”

It is absolutely disingenuous and untrue to cast these remarks as a threat. Sperling was speaking “as a friend” and offering advice that Woodward’s position would prove to be wrong and it is that error that he would eventually regret, not any imagined reprisal from the President. And to underscore how tame the exchange was even from Woodward’s perspective, he responded to Sperling’s email saying…

“Gene: You do not ever have to apologize to me. You get wound up because you are making your points and you believe them. This is all part of a serious discussion. I for one welcome a little heat; there should more given the importance. I also welcome your personal advice.”

Does that sound like someone who feels that he was threatened by a powerful and hostile government enforcer? Nevertheless, Woodward went on television and drew a picture of the exchange that is totally at odds with his own account. The only plausible explanation for this deception is that he wanted to gin up a controversy that would thrust him into the limelight and make him look like a courageous journalist suffering at the hands of a vengeful despot. In other words…a pitiful ploy for attention. Which is something he got in abundance from the right-wing media who eat this stuff up.

Fox News has been drooling over this debate for days, and their lie-riddled web site Fox Nation posted an absurd item that excised Woodward’s email response and topped off the piece with a headline bleating “Will the White House Make Bob Woodward ‘Regret’ Reporting Obama’s Sequester ‘Lies’?”

Fox Nation - Bob Woodward

In one short sentence Fox distorted the Woodward/Sperling exchange (no one threatened to “make” anyone do anything), and they inserted an unsupported allegation that Obama had lied about the sequester. All in a day’s obfuscation and deceit for Fox News.

[Update] Media Matters is reporting that a number of right-wing critics are backtracking now that the actual emails have been released and the alleged threat is clearly non-existent. For instance, Matt Lewis (The Daily Caller) says that conservatives were “played” by Woodward. Tucker Carlson appeared on Fox to say the intimidation claim was “hyped.” Erick Erickson (Red State) says he “must now move to the ‘not a threat’ camp.” However, some dead-enders are still pushing the fabricated theme. They include Breitbart’s John Nolte, Matt Drudge, and, of course, Fox News, where Neil Cavuto joined in and then let Manic Mark Levin rant uninterrupted about what a “sleazy,” “nasty,” person Obama is.

Fox News - Bob Wodward

Another Media Mea Culpa For The War In Iraq

Posted by on October 1, 2008 at 11:03 am. NO Comments :

In a book review for Bob Woodward’s latest installment of his Bush chronicles, the New York Times’ Jill Abramson decides it’s time to salve her guilty conscience. Woodward’s “The War Within” serves as the impetus for her confessional.

Abramson reveals her misgivings regarding the Times’ coverage of the build up to war with Iraq after citing a passage from Woodward’s book wherein he admits that he had not done enough at the Washington Post to expose the weakness of the administration’s arguments for the existence of WMDs and for going to war. Abramson followed up that citation by saying…

“I was Washington bureau chief for The Times while this was happening, and I failed to push hard enough for an almost identical, skeptical article, written by James Risen. This was a period when there were too many credulous accounts of the administration’s claims about Iraq’s W.M.D.”

Thanks a lot. Another too late revelation of dereliction of duty that resulted in the deaths of thousands of American soldiers and tens (hundreds?) of thousands of Iraqi civilians. How exactly does this expression of regret compensate the victims of a disastrous and deadly war? How does it repair the damage done to both Iraq and America, who is now on the brink of bankruptcy partially due to having wasted a trillion dollars fighting an imaginary enemy.

This is not the first time that prominent figures in the press have sought absolution for their failures:

Woodward previously expressed these thoughts in an online chat:
“I think the press and I in particular should have been more aggressive in looking at the run-up to the Iraq war, and specifically the alleged intelligence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction stockpiles.”

The New York Times issued this mea culpa:
“Editors at several levels who should have been challenging reporters and pressing for more skepticism were perhaps too intent on rushing scoops into the paper […] while follow-up articles that called the original ones into question were sometimes buried. In some cases, there was no follow-up at all.”

New York Times editor, Bill Keller personally apologized:
“I’ve had a few occasions to write mea culpas for my paper after we let down our readers in more important ways, including for some reporting before the war in Iraq that should have dug deeper and been more sceptical about Iraq’s purported weapons of mass destruction.”

CNN reporter Jessica Yellin weighed in with this bit of uncharacteristic honesty:
“The press corps was under enormous pressure from corporate executives, frankly, to make sure that this was a war presented in a way that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation and the president’s high approval ratings. And my own experience at the White House was that the higher the president’s approval ratings, the more pressure I had from news executives.”

Even Bill O’Reilly announced that he was wrong (but it’s OK because, he says, everyone was wrong):
“Now I supported the action against Saddam because the Secretary of State Colin Powell, former Secretary of Defense under Bill Clinton, William Cohen, the CIA, British intelligence, and a variety of other intelligence agencies all told me Saddam was making dangerous weapons in violation of the first Gulf War cease-fire […] I was wrong in my assessment, as was everybody else.”

I am willing to concede that a lot of people, reporters and politicians alike, were wrong, but not everyone. There were many who opposed the war, who saw through the administration’s lies, who spoke out about the fraud that was being forced upon the nation. The sane objections were mostly confined to alternative sources that were ignored or ridiculed. But even the mainstreamers quoted above seemed to have known at the time that they were being less than responsible with regard to their reportorial obligations.

Now Abramson joins those who have seen the error of their ways. Or have they? Abramson is the Times’s managing editor for news, but this revelation appears in a book review rather than in the news pages. And there has been little evidence that the press has altered its behavior. Keller, the Times’ editor noted last year that…

“The administration has subsidised propaganda at home and abroad, refined the art of spin, discouraged dissent, and sought to limit traditional congressional oversight and court review.”

But even with knowledge of that, the administration’s press releases are often reprinted or broadcast virtually verbatim as news. Some of that can be seen in the current Wall Street affair that is characterized as a crisis that demands the immediate implementation of the White House’s untested and hysterical solutions.

It isn’t enough for these people to confess their sins and be on their way. I don’t want to sift through another collection of apologies for the next disaster that they feel so sorry for having misreported or ignored. They need to initiate real reform that addresses the root causes of these journalistic failures. And they need to fire those who have let down their papers, their readers, and their country. When steps like these are taken, I will start to take seriously their assertions of regret. Until then, they are still just covering up for themselves and the Washington insiders on whom they are pretending to report.