Bob Woodward, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and editor in chief of The Washington Post, is calling on reporters to “very aggressively” demand an “explanation” from President Joe Biden about his disastrous performance in Thursday’s debate with President Donald Trump.
Woodward said on MSNBC’s “The Beat” on Friday, telling reporters he was “shocked” by Ari Melber.
“Biden’s performance was so bad, so terrible, that my view as a reporter is that there has to be some explanation,” Woodward told Melber. “What happened? He’d been preparing for this for a long time, he knew the consequences, and now it’s gone so badly.”
“The answer here is to report and very aggressively seek clarification,” the Post editor added.
Woodward, best known for exposing the Watergate scandal involving then-President Richard Nixon in the 1970s, argued that the account “should not be published in some book” in the future but that the public needs it “now”, and likened Biden’s performance to a “political hydrogen bomb”.
“I sat there watching it and I couldn’t believe it,” Woodward told Melber, likening Biden’s poor performance to a “political hydrogen bomb.”
Woodward joined a chorus of political commentators who have questioned whether Biden can win the next election, including the editorial board of The New York Times, which published an op-ed calling for Biden to resign during Woodward’s interview on Friday.
“Well, it’s inevitable,” Woodward said when Melber broke the news on air.
Woodward noted that Biden must have been “locked in for days” preparing for the debate and said he wouldn’t “speculate about possible explanations” for the president’s performance, but that that’s the question journalists should be focused on answering.
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“That’s where the news energy should be,” he told Melber, adding: “If a building explodes in a downtown area of some city, that news story is… what If it happens, the story is how Did this happen? why Did that happen?
“and it is “I’m very curious,” he continued, “because this was a massive disaster.”
Woodward ended by urging Democrats not to “downplay” the tangible reality of Thursday’s debate — a flash CNN post-debate poll found that 67% of viewers thought Trump performed better than Biden — and just tell voters, “Well, it was just a bad night.”
“It’s been a disjointed night,” concluded Woodward, 81.
