Iconic comedian Bill Murray joked that famed Watergate reporter Bob Woodward could have “framed” former President Richard Nixon because his book about John Belushi was “completely inaccurate.”
Woodward, who shared a Pulitzer Prize with Carl Bernstein for the Washington Post’s coverage of the Watergate scandal that helped uncover details that resulted in Nixon’s resignation, also penned the 1986 book, “Wired: The Short Life and Fast Times of John Belushi,” which Murray does not approve of.
“I read like five pages of ‘Wired,’ and I went, ‘Oh my God. They framed Nixon,'” Murray said on “The Joe Rogan Experience.”
‘ANIMAL HOUSE’ STAR JOHN BELUSHI ‘DIDN’T HAVE A PRAYER’, COULDN’T ESCAPE DRUGS: CO-STAR
Bill Murray joked that famed reporter Bob Woodward could have “framed” former President Richard Nixon. (Left: (Photo by Roy Rochlin/Getty Images), Right: (Photo by Horacio Villalobos#Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images))
Murray had a years-long friendship with Belushi, who was found dead of a drug overdose in 1982. Woodward’s book explored the comedian’s life and drug addiction years after his reporting helped push Nixon out of office.
“If this is what he writes about my friend that I’ve known, you know, for half of my adult life, which is completely inaccurate, talking to like, the people of the outer, outer circle, getting the story – what the hell did that could they have done to Nixon? I just felt like if he did this to my friend like this, and I acknowledge I only read five pages, but the five pages I read made me want to set fire to the whole thing,” Murray said.
“I went, ‘If he did this to Belushi, what he did in Nixon’s is probably soiled for me, too.’ I can’t, I can’t take it,” he continued. “And I know you say, well, ‘You could have two sources and everything like that,’ but the two sources that he had, if he had them for the ‘Wired’ book, were so far outside the inner circle that it was, it was criminal.”
“Animal House” star John Belushi died of an overdose in 1982. (Getty Images)
Fox News Digital has reached out to Woodward’s team for comment but has yet to receive a response.
Nixon resigned from office on August 8, 1974. He left the highest office in the land in the face of likely impeachment amid the Watergate scandal, which involved his administration’s cover-up of spying activities on the Democratic Party’s headquarters at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C. during the 1972 election.
Woodward was played by iconic actor Robert Redford in the 1976 film, “All the President’s Men,” which was based on the book he co-authored with Bernstein about their Watergate reporting.
He has written at least 21 books, including bestsellers on the last 10 presidents. Former Presidents Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Joe Biden and President Trump have all been covered by Woodward.
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Fox News Digital’s Christine Rousselle contributed to this report.
