A PBS senior correspondent apologized Wednesday after falsely telling her audience that former President Donald Trump tried to talk Israel out of a cease-fire amid its ongoing war in Gaza.
Judy Woodruff passed off blame for the blunder by “clarifying” that she based the flimsy scoop on outside reporting she had read before broadcasting from the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago on Monday.
“The reporting is that former President Trump is on the phone with the prime minister of Israel, urging him not to cut a deal right now, because it’s believed that would help the Harris campaign,” Woodruff told a PBS roundtable.
“Who knows whether that will come about or not, but I have to think that the Harris campaign would like for President Biden to do what presidents do, which is work on that one.”
Woodruff caught plenty of flak online for the comment — overwhelmingly from those who pointed out that the rumors she was citing were proved false days before she regurgitated them live on air.
On Wednesday, the former “NewsHour” host said she wanted to “clarify” the remarks she made about the ongoing cease-fire talks.
“As I said, this was not based on my original reporting; I was referring to reports I had read, in Axios and Reuters, about former President Trump having spoken to the Israeli Prime Minister,” Woodruff wrote on X.
“In the live TV moment, I repeated the story because I hadn’t seen later reporting that both sides denied it. This was a mistake and I apologize for it.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office told the Jerusalem Post Wednesday that Woodruff’s statements were a “complete lie.”
The Axios story Woodruff was referring to was published Aug. 14 and cited two sources who claimed Trump, 78, spoke on the phone with Netanyahu, 74, about the Gaza hostage and cease-fire deal.
ZUMAPRESS.com
Reuters reshared the story on its site — but neither report claimed Trump urged Netanyahu to hold off on a deal.
The day after the story was published, Netanyahu’s office published a statement denying that any phone call between the prime minister and Trump had occurred.
That same day, both Axios and Reuters published new stories to reflect the new denials — four days before Woodruff repeated the false information to her live audience.
PBS did not respond to messages from The Post.
Trump, however, has maintained that he did speak with Netanyahu.
At a press conference, the Republican presidential nominee claimed he encouraged the prime minister to end the war, but he criticized the terms of the proposed cease-fire.
“He knows what he’s doing, I did encourage him to get this over with,” Trump said.
“It has to get over with fast — get your victory, and get it over with. It has to stop, the killing has to stop.”
