Donald Trump's campaign may be "off the rails," Washington Post editor Bob Woodward said Thursday, but his opponents are also spouting "hyperbolic, ungenerous rhetoric" that is feeding the situation.
"I think in our business, what we have to do is stick to the facts and try to explain who these people are and what they've really done," the famed investigative journalist said on MSNBC's
"Morning Joe" program. "Obviously, you have to cover the polls and the rallies, but I think people really want the full portrait of the candidates."
Trump's comments, such as his referring to President Barack Obama as the "founder of ISIS" make headlines, said Woodward, but "a lot of the people who really are opposed to Trump, I think, are engaged in some excessive rhetoric also."
For example, on Wednesday, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote that
Trump's adult children "should be ashamed" of him for his comments about "Second Amendment people" stopping Hillary Clinton. Further, Friedman called Trump "a disgusting human being."
Woodward said Friedman's opinion was a "reasonable option, but he could not remember a time in his 40 years of covering politics that someone went after a candidate's children.
"That makes no sense," he said, "so, the excess is feeding both sides on this."
Show co-host Mika Brzezinski, though, commented that Trump "struggles with reality" and "can't even bring words that makes sense, that do anything positive for his campaign."
Donny Deutsch, a frequent panelist on the program, commented that it's possible that Americans are becoming "desensitized" to some of Trump's comments, but NBC's Willie Geist warned against taking his statements as being just election rhetoric.
"Trump just called the president of the United States the founder of ISIS, the mortal enemy of this country," Geist said. "Donald talks about how bad ISIS is, chopping off heads and drowning people in cages, and he's putting President Obama in league with those people."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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