Veteran investigative journalist Carl Bernstein urged Republican leaders in Congress to abandon President Trump and force him to abdicate his powers as president three months out from Election Day.
During an appearance Friday on CNN, Bernstein hearkened back to the Watergate scandal, describing how a trio of influential Republicans — 1964 presidential nominee Sen. Barry Goldwater, Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott, and House Minority Leader John Rhodes — went to the White House in 1974 to tell President Richard Nixon he did not have the support in Congress to survive impeachment, after which he resigned.
“Something similar is needed now. If only the Republican leadership and other Republicans would go publicly and say to this president, ‘All right, you want to stay for the rest of your term, but we are going to be a caretaker until this election, and you must begin to act in the national interests and in fact we would like to find another alternative to run as the Republican nominee for president of the United States,'” Bernstein said.
Bernstein, along with Bob Woodward, helped bring down Nixon with Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the Watergate scandal in the Washington Post. Bernstein said Trump “absolutely” has acted more recklessly than Nixon.
“I don’t think there’s any question about Richard Nixon’s competence. He understood history. Watergate was a terrible abuse of power, the likes of which we had never seen up until that time,” Bernstein said. “This is a totally different situation. We have a president of the United States now who demonstrably is not capable or stable enough or understands the history or the principles of the United States to act responsibly in the national interest.”
He argued the coronavirus situation is “out of control” because of “the actions and inaction of this unstable, authoritarian president.”
Speaking of sources close to Trump who claim he is sending federal law enforcement to Portland, Oregon, and other cities to “provoke violence,” Bernstein implored Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to act. He noted that the Kentucky Republican has shown he is willing to stand up to Trump after he outright rejected the president’s suggestion to delay the presidential election.
“It’s time for the Republicans to act. That is what we need. We need them to set up a guardrail to protect us from this president in the next three months,” Bernstein said. “They understand — including what you saw McConnell do yesterday while he held his nose. They understand the danger of this president of the United States, and it’s damn past time that some of them step up and say we have to save the republic in these next few months, in this national emergency, because we are in a national presidential emergency, and those guys know it. McConnell knows it. He understands it. And it’s time that they take some action to protect the United States of America from this president.”
