(Ben Sellers, Headline USA) With the walls beginning to close in on several suspected deep-state coup-plotters following Attorney General Pam Bondi’s recent order to convene a grand jury in the Russia-gate conspiracy, members of the so-called Mockingbird media have predictably begun to lash out.
On Tuesday, Watergate reporter Bob Woodward once again reared his head. But unlike many of the other nothingburgers that he and partner Carl Bernstein have declared “Worse than Watergate,” turning the 50-year-old usurpation of former President Richard Nixon into a clichéd catchphrase, Woodward seemed a bit reticent to talk about the Obama-backed scandal that is, on its face, exponentially worse than Watergate.
Woodward instead fumed over President Donald Trump’s refusal to be cowed by the same forces that have incessantly sought to destroy him since 2016.
“You see in his tweets and what he says publicly, this burst—these bursts of ego that he is in charge, he’s controlling everything,” Woodward complained to MSNBC host Ari Melber.
“And as I’ve watched this and listened to it—I did three books on Trump,” he continued. “It’s pathetic that you have the president of the United States out there just pounding away and saying, ‘Oh look, we have got to do it my way and only my way.’”
The iconic reporter’s “non-denial denial” did not dispute the facts surrounding the release of damning documents that implicate former President Barack Obama in a seditious plot to push the debunked Steele dossier for political advantage.
Instead, Woodward appeared to double-down on disinformation by floating a new talking point for leftist media to change the subject: suggesting that Trump is suffering from an unidentified health ailment.
“Why is the president of the United States feeling so out of it, or disabled, that he has to say things like that?” Woodward said.
During his first presidential term, Trump notably granted 19 interviews to Woodward for the 2020 book Rage.
Woodward then used the book to push a smear attack on the embattled president just before the 2020 election, claiming Trump had known a month before the U.S. outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic that the virus had potential for mass contagion.
It remains unclear why Woodward waited eight months to disclose the February 2020 interview while knowing millions of lives could have been saved by going public when preventative measures were possible.
However, the one-time Navy communications official has long been suspected of participating in the CIA’s Operation Mockingbird program to infiltrate major newsrooms in order to push propagandist narratives, including the use of top FBI official Mark Felt as the anonymous Watergate informant “Deep Throat.”
April 5, 1976@nicksortor @GuntherEagleman @matt_vanswol @WallStreetMav
Obama, 9/11 & the Fed creation are solid answers & Harambe makes sense as a marker of when the culture rot first spilled over, but if we're talking about when it started, we have to consider HOW it started.🧵 https://t.co/FkuDoYOtGr pic.twitter.com/AMQvqsps53— Ben Sellers (@realbensellers) August 6, 2025
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard last week hinted at the possibility that she would end Operation Mockingbird, surprising many who were unaware that the program was still ongoing.
In Tuesday’s interview, however, Woodward appeared to make a veiled threat against Trump for flouting his deep-state overlords in the intelligence community.
“He doesn’t know what’s in his own interest,” Woodward claimed of Trump’s hard-earned bravado. “If you had a friend who was talking in public and saying things like Trump says—you know, ‘People don’t explain to me, I explain to them’—you would sit the friend down and say, ‘Let’s tone it down.’”
The remark was reminiscent of Sen. Chuck Schumer’s 2017 “six ways till Sunday” threat presaging the lengthy cleanup effort on the Russia hoax, which included a special counsel investigation, two impeachments, a rigged election, multiple lawfare attacks and at least two confirmed assassination attempts.
After last night, Schumer’s “six ways to Sunday” 2017 line on Maddow’s show is more chilling than ever before. pic.twitter.com/w2veHg9PlA
— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) August 9, 2022
Yet, like corrupt Obama-era officials, many legacy news outlets have since faced a significant reckoning for their aggressive anti-Trump attacks.
With public trust of the media bottoming out to its lowest point since the pre-Watergate era, once respected institutions like 60 Minutes and NPR have lost millions of dollars through legal settlements and legislative defunding.
Other media personalities are feeling the pressure of declining ratings—including comedians Stephen Colbert and Howard Stern, both vicious Trump critics, whose shows face the prospect of impending cancellation.
At Woodward’s outlet, the Washington Post, notorious “fact-checker” Glenn Kessler was the latest left-winger to flee the newsroom after the Jeff Bezos-owned newspaper mulled ways to woo back Trump supporters.
Trump previously sued Woodward and his publisher, Simon & Schuster, citing copyright infringement after they sold the audio recordings of Woodward’s interviews with Trump without permission.
The $49 million lawsuit was dismissed last month by Judge Paul Gardephe, a George W. Bush appointee.
Ben Sellers is a freelance writer and former editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/realbensellers.
