Sometimes I feel like an oracle as everything we predicted about the Bob Woodward book is coming true.

    

First, it is aggressively anti-Trump so the media is giving Woodward a collective big hug.

    

Second, hours of cable news time will be spent discussing the “facts” in the book even though there are no facts.

    

That’s because nobody is quoted on the record.  The anti-Trump stories come from anonymous sources on “deep background.”

    

Here’s how that works.  Human beings actually told Mr. Woodward the stuff in the book.  I do not believe he made things up.  Not his style.  But it’s easy to get people to say bad things about powerful people.  Abraham Lincoln was scorched by his “team of rivals.”  John Adams was eviscerated by men who worked for him.

    

The problem with using anonymous sources is verifying their claims.  The game goes like this: a source refuses to allow his or her name to be used when dishing dirt but tells the reporter to call a friend who the anonymous person says he confided in.  “Oh, yeah,” the friend tells the reporter when he or she calls, “he told me that the very day it happened.”

    

Of course, the friend stays anonymous as well but the reporter has “verified.”

    

Terrible, destructive situation, that can be completely contrived.  But profitable.  Bob Woodward will have another number one bestseller.

    

Hope you will watch the No Spin News tonight beginning at 7 eastern, plenty to talk about with Monica Crowley.  If you want fair, incisive news analysis, we’ve got it for you.  And no anonymous sourcing.