PBS’s Judy Woodruff apologizes for falsely telling live audience that Trump tried to pull Israel out of ceasefire deal

A senior PBS correspondent apologized Wednesday after falsely telling her audience that former President Trump tried to talk Israel out of a ceasefire amid its ongoing war in Gaza.

Judy Woodruff deflected blame for the error by “clarifying” that she based the poor information on outside reporting she had read before broadcasting from the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago on Monday.

“The report is that former President Trump is on the phone with the prime minister of Israel, asking him not to make a deal now because it is believed that it would help the Harris campaign,” Woodruff said in a PBS roundtable.

“Who knows if that’s going to happen or not, but I have to think the Harris campaign would like President Biden to do what presidents do, which is work on it.”

Woodruff drew a lot of online backlash for the comment — with the overwhelming majority pointing out that the rumors she was citing had been proven false days before she put them back on the air.

On Wednesday, the former NewsHour host said she wanted to “clarify” remarks she made about ongoing ceasefire talks.

“As I said, this was not based on my original reporting; I was referring to reports I had read, in Axios and Reuters, of former President Trump speaking with the Israeli prime minister,” Woodruff wrote in X.

“In the live TV moment, I repeated the story because I hadn’t seen it reported later that both sides denied it. This was a mistake and I apologize for it.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office told The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday that Woodruff’s statements were a “complete lie.”

The Axios story Woodruff was referring to was published Aug. 14 and cited two sources who claimed that Trump, 78, spoke on the phone with Netanyahu, 74, about the hostage and Gaza ceasefire deal.

Reuters reprinted the story on its site — but neither report claimed Trump asked Netanyahu to block a deal.

A day after the story was published, Netanyahu’s office released a statement denying that there had been any phone calls between the prime minister and Trump.

That same day, both Axios and Reuters published new stories to reflect the new denials — four days before Woodruff fed the false information back to her live audience.

PBS did not respond to messages from The Post.

Trump, however, has maintained that he spoke with Netanyahu.

At a press conference, the Republican presidential candidate claimed he encouraged the prime minister to end the war, but he criticized the terms of the proposed ceasefire.

“He knows what he’s doing, I encouraged him to finish this,” Trump said.

“It has to be overcome quickly – take your victory and settle it. It must stop, the killing must stop.”