Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein Blast Washington Post's 'Surprising' Decision Not To Endorse

The famed Watergate reporters questioned their former publication for ignoring its "own overwhelming reportorial evidence" of a Trump threat.

Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the famed journalists whose reporting on the Watergate scandal for The Washington Post led to President Richard Nixon’s resignation, questioned their former publication’s “surprising and disappointing” decision to not endorse a candidate in the 2024 election.

“We respect the traditional independence of the editorial page, but this decision 11 days out from the 2024 presidential election ignores the Washington Post’s own overwhelming reportorial evidence on the threat Donald Trump poses to democracy,” they wrote in a statement shared by CNN’s Brian Stelter on Friday.

“Under Jeff Bezos’s ownership, the Washington Post’s news operation has used its abundant resources to rigorously investigate the danger and damage a second Trump presidency could cause to the future of American democracy and that makes this decision even more surprising and disappointing, especially this late in the electoral process.”

The Post had reportedly already drafted an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris before its billionaire owner, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, ultimately killed it, according to the newspaper’s reporting on the decision.

The paper’s non-endorsement in this year’s presidential election, its first since 1988, sparked in-house condemnations along with backlash across the media world including from The Post’s former executive editor Marty Baron.