During Night One of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, veteran reporter Judy Woodruff falsely reported on a Donald Trump phone call to Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that never happened, a call that would have made Trump appear to influence Israel’s war policy in order to help himself win election.
Discussing how lame-duck President Joe Biden could still help VP Kamala Harris succeed him in office, Woodruff made the hasty, unsourced claim that showed Trump as unscrupulous during the 11 p.m. (ET) hour Monday night.
Judy Woodruff: I would venture to say, without hearing this directly from anybody, that one thing that the Harris campaign would love is if President Biden would bring home a cease-fire in the Middle East right now between Gaza and Israel. We know that Secretary of State Blinken is over there right now working Netanyahu. 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 that, it’s believed that would help the Harris campaign. So, I don’t know where that -- 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.
The accusation is reminiscent of the “October Surprise” election conspiracy theory -- the unsubstantiated rumor that Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign, led by William Casey, delayed the release of the 52 American hostages in Iran in order to win election over Democrat Jimmy Carter.
But “the reporting” Woodruff cited turned out false, and Woodruff herself seemed to have misinterpreted it anyway. The next day, after Netanyahu’s office denied the call had occurred, Woodruff took to X to “clarify,” explaining she had mistakenly forwarded initial faulty reporting that had been corrected afterward.
Yet strangely, not even Axios's original bad report backed up what Woodruff said about Trump urging Netanyahu not to cut a deal with Hamas. If anything, the report suggested Trump was pushing him to take it: "One source said Trump's call was intended to encourage Netanyahu to take the deal, but stressed he didn't know if this is indeed what the former president told Netanyahu."
Where did Woodruff get the opposite idea, then?
Here's Woodruff's apologetic X post:
I want to clarify my remarks on the PBS News special on Monday night about the ongoing cease fire talks in the Middle East. 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. 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.
After first reporting on the alleged Trump-Netanyahu call last week, Axios updated its story with an Editor’s Note, August 15.
This story has been updated to reflect that Netanyahu's office denied a phone call took place on Wednesday between the Israeli prime minister and former President Trump.
Woodruff cited the discredited account during PBS’s live DNC coverage five days later, on Monday night, August 19.
