Woodward: Anonymous op-ed ‘too vague’ for me

Veteran journalist Bob Woodward said Sunday that, if he were a New York Times editor, he would not have published this week’s op-ed from an anonymous “senior [Trump] administration official.”

“I wouldn’t have used it,” Woodward told CBS News.

“Too vague and does not meet the standards of trying to describe specific incidents. Specific incidents are the building blocks of journalism, as you well know,” he added.

{mosads}Woodward told “CBS Sunday Morning” he would have pressed the op-ed’s writer for concrete details about their claims if they had come to him.

“Quite frankly if there was a person in the White House or in the administration who wanted to tell me what’s in the op-ed piece I would say ‘OK, name me who was there. What is the specific incident?’ ” Woodward said. “As you know from having read my book there are dates and times and participants.”

Woodward’s comments come as White House officials are on the offensive following incendiary claims made by the anonymous official in the Times, as well as those made by White House staff in Woodward’s upcoming book, “Fear: Trump in the White House.” Both accounts claim staffers are working to undermine Trump’s impulses, regularly bad-mouthing the president behind closed doors. 

Trump and the White House have vehemently denied claims made both in the op-ed and in Woodward’s book, with the president implying the op-ed is an act of “treason” and denouncing Woodward’s book as fiction. 

Trump and administration officials have separately called for an investigation into the anonymous op-ed’s author, even floating the possibility of seeking a Justice Department probe into the matter.