“Trump the businessman or Trump, the, you know, the guy who was nice to everybody it’s this sort of not where we’re heading,” confessed Washington Post reporter Matt Viser in a recorded phone call O’Keefe Media Group received from an anonymous source, admitting that the paper’s Donald Trump coverage is not about balanced reporting, but about shaping a narrative to damage the president.
Speaking about a story tied to Trump’s past involvement in beauty competitions and Jeffrey Epstein, Viser dismissed the idea of publishing anything positive, saying, “If all we had was a bunch of people saying that Trump was a gentleman and he was very nice and, you know, everybody with respect, like, I don’t think we do do that story. We just wouldn’t do a story.” He went on to explain that the project will only move forward if reporters can “find out something new that was happening that Trump was doing back then… that we [WaPo] can kind of expose to people.”
Viser made clear the paper is not interested in a neutral profile, stressing that it is “definitely not a fluff piece of like, Trump the businessman or Trump the guy who was nice to everybody.” Instead, the “new peg is Epstein,” and the Post’s team has been combing through “old photos or videos” to try to connect Trump and Epstein during the pageant years.
He further admitted that much of the reporting so far has been based on unnamed individuals, saying, “We’ve talked to a number of people… mostly, it’s been anonymous,” and confirmed that they are “not at the point of putting people’s names on things.”
O’Keefe Media Group has reached out to Matt Viser and the Washington Post for comment regarding Viser’s statements revealing the Washington Post’s practice of selective reporting. At the time of publication, neither Viser nor the Post has responded.
