And investigative reporter Wayne Barrett has died at age 71 of complications of interstitial lung disease in Manhattan. News of Barrett’s death broke as thousands protested in Central Park against the inauguration of Donald Trump, a man he began covering in the 1970s. His 1991 unauthorized biography of Donald Trump was republished last year in paperback with the title of “Trump: The Greatest Show on Earth: The Deals, the Downfall, the Reinvention.” Barrett continued to cover Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign even though he was largely homebound due to lung cancer. This is Wayne Barrett speaking on Democracy Now! when we interviewed him at his home last year.
Wayne Barrett: “Well, he’s not—it’s more than that he’s something unlike anything—I mean, you know, I’m a Democrat. I’m a liberal Democrat. I have voted in my life for candidates on the Republican line—not often, but sometimes. But I think that this is a man who is—he’s really not qualified to run the Trump Organization. He’s not fit to run the Trump Organization. So he’s certainly not fit to run America. I think he represents not just a danger to America, but because we are such an influence in the world, it’s really a shocking threat to the world. And so, you know, I’m in a sickbed a lot, but he gets me up out of it.”
That was investigative reporter Wayne Barrett. He died on Thursday in Manhattan—only one day before the inauguration of Donald Trump, a man he’d reported on since the 1970s. Click here to see our full hour-long interview with Wayne Barrett in his house just a few months ago.