PBS’ Woodruff Retracts False Trump-Netanyahu Report, Apologizes

Judy Woodruff of PBS Newshour apologized Wednesday for a false claim she made earlier this week that former President Donald Trump had told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to reject a hostage deal with Hamas.

She also retracted the report, which had been based on an earlier report in Axios, which itself was based on unnamed U.S. sources. (Axios later updated its report after both President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu flatly it.)

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…

— Judy Woodruff (@JudyWoodruff) August 21, 2024

Woodruff’s retraction and apology came hours after Breitbart News published a story earlier Wednesday, reporting that Rep. Mike Waltz (R-FL) had demanded that she retract and apologize.

As Breitbart News reported Wednesday:

Rep. Mike Waltz (R-FL) demanded Wednesday that PBS NewsHour‘s Judy Woodruff retract her claim on Tuesday that former President Donald Trump was telling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to reject a hostage deal.

Waltz, speaking at a press briefing at Trump Tower, flatly denied Woodruff’s claim, and said that the veteran anchor needs to “come with the goods” to back up her reporting, or else retract her report.

Trump told reporters last week that the last time he had spoken to Netanyahu was in July, when the latter visited Mar-a-Lago.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of “”The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days,” available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of “The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency,” now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.