Last night John Bolton was on with Martha McCallum and pushed back hard on Jennifer Griffin’s confirmation of the story in the Atlantic, saying she’s flat wrong:
Griffin’s reporting claims that Bolton wasn’t in the room but Bolton says that’s just not true, that he was there for all of it and Trump never disparaged the military.
Clearly Bolton has no love for Trump, which was echoed in his parting shot at the president. So I believe it says something serious about Griffin’s sources in that Bolton is calling her ‘flat wrong’.
Yesterday Griffin went on Fox News and claimed that Trump called a room full of four star generals in 2017 ‘babies and losers’:
Bravo @JenGriffinFNC once again (and credit to Fox News on this).
She says Mnuchin’s defense of Trump is “patently false.” Mnuchin was present when Trump called four-star generals “babies” and “losers.”
She cites and confirms @PhilipRucker @CarolLeonnig.pic.twitter.com/TI86SCbDWV
— Ryan Goodman (@rgoodlaw) September 8, 2020
While it’s easier to believe Trump might say this about generals as opposed to active military or the military dead, I honestly don’t know if I can believe her reporting anymore given the rebuttals against it, especially the one from Bolton above.
I’m not here to disparage Griffin because I just don’t know whether the issue is with her or her sources. If I had to guess, I’d come down on the side that her sources are just using her to attack the president, but who knows.
I will add that Sean Davis from the Federalist noted the other day a separate time when her reporting ended up not being true, saying “Her sources also claimed a “Kurdish genocide” was inevitable after Trump removed U.S. troops from Syria. When Trump refused to be morally blackmailed by the forever war caucus, the story just disappeared, and the supposed “genocide” never happened.”