(2018-08-01) — Celebrated Watergate reporter Bob Woodward this morning denied that he wrote his new book, “Fear: Trump in the White House,” to aid the president’s strategy of distraction and chaos.

“I’m a serious professional journalist,” Woodward alleged, “not a Trump lackey or a useful idiot helping him to stir up trivial chaos about personal stylistic quirks, and thus distracting the public from his quiet efforts to roll back regulations, to seed the courts with Constitutionalists, to cut taxes, and to project American strength abroad.”

According to reports, the Trump White House made no effort to “handle” Woodward during his research, and didn’t restrict his access, or monitor conversations with White House staff the way past administrations have.

“The failure of the White House to spoon-feed me, or to listen in and spin during interviews, demonstrates what I call a climate of fear that pervades this administration,” Woodward said. “Staffers chattered to me like magpies, and dished dirt, because they’re petrified of the president’s loyalty demands, of his power, and of his vindictive nature. It’s not because they’re playing me and my colleagues in the media like a fiddle.”

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said she hasn’t spoken with her boss about the book, but she’s sure Trump “thinks Bob Woodward is a total joke, and he would be glad to write a blurb for the dust jacket and promote it on Twitter.”