'Crook, Liar, Racist': As a Veteran Reporter, I’m Not Afraid to Call Trump What He Is

Calling Trump corrupt and a threat to America are not opinions. They are objective statements of fact.

Mar 12, 2025

*Trump takes questions during a press briefing on Jan. 30, 2025. Photo by Roberto Schimdt via Getty Images*

Donald Trump’s corrupt, chaotic presidency has propelled a long-running journalistic debate: how to accurately characterize the threat he poses to America.

Indeed, my opening paragraph itself provides grist for that debate. Can a fair-minded reporter flatly describe the president as corrupt and a threat to America itself? Are those facts?

Many colleagues I respect would answer “no.” When I interviewed the great newspaper editor Marty Baron a couple of weeks ago, he cautioned that such descriptions allow Trump to discredit journalists as partisans and are best left to opinion pages.

But I say, “Yes.” Calling Trump corrupt and a threat to America are not opinions. They are objective statements of fact.

I never expected to reach this point when I became a journalist 47 years ago. I did not pursue opinion journalism for a reason. My model was my father, Richard Harwood, who built his stellar Washington Post career on fearless reporting and news analysis.

Indeed, dad was appointed the Post’s first ombudsman after an earlier Republican president, Richard Nixon, howled about biased journalism the way Trump denounces “fake news.” An orphaned kid from the Midwest on a newspaper stocked with Ivy Leaguers, he found merit in some of those complaints.

So I began my career at the St. Petersburg Times in Florida, well aware of the need to fairly reflect different viewpoints – Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals, police officers and college professors, Blacks and whites. My first big political profile was a sympathetic look at a GOP retiree legendary for her success in rounding up votes within her condominium complex.

Crediting the legitimacy of both sides wasn’t difficult then. American politics did not neatly sort the good guys from the bad guys.

Why I’m Not Afraid to Say ‘Lie’

Not until I reported from South Africa in the mid-1980s did I encounter that clear a moral contrast. The uprising against apartheid made election campaigns I covered at home feel trivial and pedestrian.

It’s not as if the core themes that would animate Trump and the MAGA movement weren’t around.

Ronald Reagan played racial politics with his denunciations of what became known as ‘welfare queens’; George H.W. Bush linked his Democratic opponent to a Black murderer named Willie Horton. George W. Bush used his opposition to gay marriage as a weapon in his 2004 re-election race.

But, unsavory tactics did not define those Republican presidents.

They embraced American values, and in important moments showed they could unify the country. During the elder Bush’s term, he did not stop federal regulators from sanctioning his son Neil for poor stewardship of a failed savings-and-loan.

Donald Trump is different. He has gained power by catering to his party’s darkest impulses, and his own.

Political life has amplified his lifelong penchant for racist behavior. Questioning Barack Obama’s legitimacy as president, labeling immigrants dangerous criminals, denouncing “shithole countries” with dark-skinned citizenries, thundering against diversity programs – Trump has painted a crystal-clear self-portrait.

The same goes for his relentless dishonesty. Like many colleagues, I once hesitated using the word “lie.” After all, Trump might be delusional and unable to perceive the truth. But he has long since burned through the benefit of the doubt.

Facts: Grifter, Crook, and Liar

In his first presidency, Trump went through the motions of caring about the integrity of his public service. Now, he openly milks his position for money, inviting ordinary supporters and those who would potentially bribe him to buy Trump-branded Bibles, sneakers, and cryptocurrency assets.

Over the last two months, he has recklessly turned the lives of millions upside down, from civil servants to immigrants. He has encouraged political violence by pardoning participants in the Jan. 6 insurrection he incited and firing prosecutors who obtained their convictions.

He has endangered his own former Cabinet members by removing their security protections. He has damaged the rule of law by pursuing vengeance against those who prosecuted his own crimes.

He has betrayed the free world by pressuring Ukraine to surrender to Russia. Trump’s cries of “hoax” about his mutual-assistance relationship with Vladimir Putin have become a sick joke.

So, I’ve become quite comfortable asserting these facts:

Donald Trump is a racist, a grifter, and a crook.
He is a liar – and a cruel one.
He governs as an authoritarian, not as the leader of a democracy.
He weakens America and its global standing.

I once could not have dreamed of describing a president this way. But truth remains the highest journalistic value, and those objective realities sit in plain sight.

I still hesitate to assert some descriptors. Is the sitting president of the United States a traitor to his country?

I’ll need more evidence before reaching that conclusion; Trump 2.0 is less than two months old.

John Harwood is the former chief Washington correspondent for CNBC and White House correspondent for CNN. He has interviewed every president from George H.W. Bush to Joe Biden. Sign up for ‘The Stakes with John Harwood’ to get all of his columns in your inbox.