President Trump and the journalist Bob Woodward are in an extraordinary public duel over his new book, Fear: Trump in the White House.



Trump says it's pure fiction, "a con on the public," and that quotes were literally "made up" by Woodward. The reporter staunchly stands by his research.



Who to believe? Tough call, isn't it.

There's more about Christie in Woodward book. He told Trump the campaign was toast, cussed out Bannon.



On the one hand, we have a veteran journalist who famously broke the Watergate story along with Carl Bernstein and has been among the most respected national political reporters ever since. As Trump told Woodward only days before this book was published, "You've always been fair."



On the other, we have a president whose thousands of lies and misleading statements have been diligently chronicled by fact-checkers.



Also chiming in with Trump's denials is Chris Christie, whose history of flat-out lying dates back well before Bridgegate. Remember when he said he was personal friends with the King of Jordan, to justify taking extravagant personal gifts?

Or Christie's promise to unions during his first campaign, in writing, that he would never touch their pension benefits, and that any suggestion he would was "a lie"?

So which man do you trust more? Like most Jersey folks, those who know him best, we'll take Woodward.

Trump accused Christie of 'stealing' and 'jinxing' his campaign, Woodward book says. Christie fires back.



Trump aides dished to Woodward about the many ways they had to band together to block the uninformed and even unhinged president's most perilous impulses.

Like Gary Cohn, Trump's former economic advisor, swiping a draft statement off the president's desk that would have withdrawn the U.S. from a free-trade agreement with South Korea, and another order that would have unilaterally pulled us out of NAFTA.



Among the parts involving Christie: Trump accused our former governor of "stealing from me" by raising money for the transition team he headed, instead of the ongoing campaign. "You're jinxing me," Trump said, threatening to shut down the transition: "I told you from day one it was just an honorary title."

Other details: Trump told Cohn to just "print money" to lower the national debt. Defense Secretary James Mattis compared the president to a "fifth or sixth grader." White House Chief of Staff John Kelly called the Trump White House "Crazytown."



People in these positions won't talk on the record because they want to protect themselves. So Woodward gets his information on deep background - sources tell him he can use it, as long as it's not attributed to them. Then he works to verify the information with others who were in the room.



It's the same technique he used to break news of the Watergate scandal. A deep background source automatically comes with a public denial. But the idea that this is "fiction" invented by Woodward is nonsense.



Note that in Christie's denial of the book's details, he doesn't say where the mistakes actually lie. It's a non-denial denial, the same as we got from Cohen and former top White House aide Rob Porter.



Sure, Woodward's anonymous sources include the self-interested backstabbers and grifters that Trump surrounds himself with. Steve Bannon comes to mind. But Woodward doesn't just talk to one source and spew out what he says. He talks to lots of people.



Woodward says he often gets calls from sources, who tell him that they will deny everything in public in order to save face. They issue indignant statements that don't refute any specifics: calling the story "selective," or "misleading," like Porter did.



In doing so, they tacitly confirm the essential facts of the story. So does the reputation behind the man. Woodward has a track record of credibility that stretches over a half century; Trump averages seven falsehoods a day, and Christie has habit of lying.



Just days after this book came out, an anonymous White House official penned a separate op-ed for the New York Times, saying officials even debated using the 25th amendment against Trump because he was so clearly mentally unfit.



Regardless of what you think of this move, or the charges in Woodward's book, the worst part is that it is so utterly believable.

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