Bob Woodward fires back after Trump calls him a liar: 'The truth will emerge'

Stephen Proctor

On The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Bob Woodward got the chance to respond to President Trump calling him a liar earlier in the day. Following an appearance on Today in which Woodward spoke about his new book, Fear: Trump in the White House, Trump sent out a tweet calling Woodward a liar (and misquoting anchor Savannah Guthrie, making one of her questions seem like a condemnation of Woodward).

When Colbert asked Woodward how it feels when the president says he’s lying, he answered, “I’m not.”

Trump has referred to the book as a scam and a joke — a much different tone than he struck in mid-August, when he spoke to Woodward on the phone and expressed regret for not getting to be part of the book. Woodward told Trump he had tried to get an interview with him but that it just never happened. Trump responded, “It’s really too bad, because nobody told me about it, and I would’ve loved to have spoken to you. You know I’m very open to you. I think you’ve always been fair.”

Trump has pointed out that many in his administration who were quoted in Fear saying negative things about him now deny ever saying those things. Woodward shrugged this off as people just trying to save their jobs. Trump also notes that Woodward uses anonymous sources, something the president despises — as evidenced by his reaction to a scathing op-ed in the New York Times, supposedly written by an anonymous senior administration official.

But Woodward stands by his work. “I’m willing to put myself out here,” he told Colbert. “I’ve done the work. This is the best reporting you can do, or that I can do.”

Woodward said he respects Trump’s right to say what he wants about the book but remembered what his former editor at the Washington Post, Ben Bradlee, used to say during the Watergate scandal.

“He said, ‘The truth emerges,’” Woodward said. “And the truth will emerge on this too.”

The Late Show With Stephen Colbert airs weeknights at 11:35 on CBS.

Check out Rudy Giuliani denying the claim that Trump called him a ‘baby who needed to be changed’:

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