Americans need to “wake up” to what is happening in White House, Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward said on Sunday, days after President Trump and top officials attacked his new book that outlined the chaotic inner workings of the administration.
Woodward, who helped to uncover the Watergate scandal that led to the resignation of then-President Richard Nixon, defended the reporting that led to the bombshell revelations in the book, which Trump has attacked as fiction.
[Bob Woodward: Trump is waging a ‘war on truth’]
“Multiple interviews with key witnesses. One person I interviewed nine times and transcripts of these conversations are 7 or 800 pages long, goes hundreds of pages,” Woodward told CBS.
Of the more than 100 individuals that he spoke with for the book, Woodward said “maybe half of those are key people.”
Woodward said the reporting took him into “the belly of the beast.” Asked for the key takeaway, he said “people better wake up to what’s going on.”
Days after excerpts of Woodward’s book leaked, the New York Times published an anonymous op-ed from a “senior administration official” detailing an internal resistance in the White House against Trump.
Woodward suggested he would not have published such an essay.
“As you know from having read my book, there are dates and times and participants. I wouldn’t have used it,” he said. “Too vague and not, does not meet the standards of trying to describe specific incidents. Specific incidents are the building blocks of journalism, as you well know.”
