Flashback: The Media LOVE Using Bob Woodward to Bash GOP Presidents

On Sunday night’s 60 Minutes, correspondent Scott Pelley set-up Woodward as an objective truth-teller, so as to make his anti-Trump conclusion seem especially meaningful, as seen in this back-and-forth:

Bob Woodward: “The President is the wrong man for the job.”

Scott Pelley: “But you're known as the reporter who doesn't put his thumb on the scale, and yet at the end of this book, you do just that.”

Woodward: “It’s a conclusion based on evidence.”

If it all sounds familiar, it is: the commotion over the leaks and Woodward interviews follows a pattern when it comes to his previous books that bash GOP presidents.

When Woodward came out with his 2018 book “Fear: Trump in the White House,” CBS Evening News anchor Jeff Glor led his September 4 program with it: “The latest book on the Trump White House paints an ugly picture of the current presidency. Bob Woodward, whose reporting helped bring down President Richard Nixon, says Chief-of-Staff John Kelly said, ‘We’re in crazy town.’” Over on ABC’s World News Tonight, senior White House correspondent Cecilia Vega noted: “Chief-of-staff John Kelly once reportedly complained the president is ‘an idiot.’”

For his book State of Denial, all three morning shows (December 28, 2006) featured a Woodward interview with then-recently deceased former President Gerald Ford, in which Ford criticized the Bush administration for its decision to go to war with Iraq.

On ABC’s Good Morning America, anchor Robin Roberts, substitute co-host George Stephanopoulos, and reporter Claire Shipman seemed disappointed that the former president had not come forward publicly with his criticism prior to his death, saying that it could have made a difference in the U.S.’s decision to go to war: