Veteran investigative journalist Carl Bernstein offered a guess about why President Trump is attacking Bob Woodward’s forthcoming book.
After Trump predicted last week that the book, Rage, will be “a FAKE” even though he was interviewed by the journalist a dozen times, according to CNN, Bernstein told Reliable Sources host Brian Stelter that his fellow Watergate sleuth’s journalistic methodology threatens the president’s ability to tell lies.
“The president realizes that he can’t out talk Bob Woodward,” Bernstein said on Sunday. “If I know anything in this world, it’s the methodology of Bob Woodward. And the methodology is that you go back time and time again and interview the principals that you’re reporting on and the people around them. And as you continue to do that, it becomes obvious to the principal, in this case the president of the United States, some of the dimensions of the story.”
“The dimensions of this story, clearly now that Trump has called it fake news, from hearing from Bob, the questions, he knows that this book is going to upend his easy, happy-talking lies,” Bernstein added. “And that’s going to be a fundamental element of the book. And I say this not from inside knowledge of the contents of the book, but understanding the methodology, which Trump thought that he could outsmart. Trump is always trying to outsmart the truth.”
Woodward’s new book, which is a sequel to 2018’s Fear, is due to be released on Sept. 15. Rage is expected to address Trump’s thoughts on the Black Lives Matter movement, the coronavirus pandemic, the economy, and details about 25 letters exchanged between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, according to publisher Simon & Schuster.
Woodward, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner who is best known for his investigative reporting with Bernstein that shed light on the Watergate scandal leading to President Richard Nixon’s resignation in 1974, heavily leans on the practice of recording conversations and has said he is looking for tapes of conversations of Trump and people in his inner circle.
