Tea at Trianon: Secrets: Will Bob Woodward’s New Memoir Be a Coverup?

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, September 30, 2026

Secrets: Will Bob Woodward’s New Memoir Be a Coverup?

From Mark Judge at Hot Air:

Will Woodward have the guts in Secrets to criticize the press? To “walk down the painful road of introspection” about his own profession? It’s possible. The phrase “walk down the painful road of introspection” is one Woodward himself used to criticize his colleagues at the Washington Post. It appeared in “The Press vs the President,” a long series of articles by Jeff Gerth that were published in January 2023 in the Columbia Journalism Review. The intelligence community set up President Trump for failure in 2016 by falsely claiming he was a tool of the Kremlin. The media peddled garbage, ignored contradictory evidence, and flat-out lied. “The Press vs the President,” which is a comprehensive and damning indictment of the media. (Seriously, go read it.)
One of the people interviewed in Gerth’s series is Bob Woodward. In January 2017, Woodward went on Fox News and criticized the Steele dossier, the anti-Trump file which was funded by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and compiled by ex-British spy Christopher Steele. Woodward called the dossier a “garbage document.” The Steele dossier claimed Trump was hanging out with prostitutes in Moscow.
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 WashingtonPost 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 was a ‘fizzle’ but reporters were ‘never going to declare it was going to end up dry.’” (Read more.)