MARK JUDGE: How Bob Woodward Could Have Saved the ‘Washington Post’ from Russiagate Humiliation.

In January 2017, Woodward went on Fox News to dismiss the Steele dossier, which was funded by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and compiled by ex-British spy Christopher Steele, as a “garbage document.” The Steele dossier was opposition research that claimed Trump was hanging out with prostitutes in Moscow and was in the pocket of Putin.

You’d think that such a statement coming from the media’s Watergate hero would have had some effect on the Washington Post—but it didn’t. Jeff Gerth describes what happened next:

After his remarks on Fox, Woodward said he “reached out to people who covered this” at the paper, identifying them only generically as “reporters,” to explain why he was so critical. Asked how they reacted, Woodward said: “To be honest, there was a lack of curiosity on the part of the people at the [Washington] Post about what I had said, why I said this, and I accepted that and I didn’t force it on anyone.

Woodward also told Gerth that the Mueller report would “fizzle” but added that reporters were “never going to declare it’s going to end up dry.”

In 2021, as the Steele dossier was falling apart, Erik Wemple, the media critic for the Post, pleaded with the media, including his own paper, to come clean. “What most dismayed me,” Wemple wrote, “was the failure of MSNBC and CNN to counter and properly address the questions I was asking them.” Temple concluded that for the media “a reckoning is years overdue.” In case there was any doubt, Wemple made a demand about the fake Russiagate coverage: “Retract the stories.” Of course, they didn’t.

Speaking of Wemple, he’s making a lateral move from the WaPo the Gray Lady: