Veteran Washington Post journalist Carl Bernstein on Monday offered a self-important warning, insisting that journalists face a “crisis” as they deal with the “morally” unfit President. Appearing on CNN to talk about Donald Trump’s reaction to the racist violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, the Watergate-era reporter declared that the real conversation among those in D.C. is this: “How do you deal with a President who morally, ethically, has no regard for the law in their view and therefore is unfit to be president in a way that none of his predecessors were?”
Bernstein lectured his fellow journalists: “We now have a story in which we as reporters need to be talking to high sources in the intelligence community, in the White House itself, in the Congress about the competency and fitness of the president of the United States. That's the real story here. It's a crisis.”
Morally unfit? This from the man who defended the Clintons?
The journalist also slimed Trump supporters as a bunch of racists:
That doesn't mean that the President doesn't have his base which he appeals to and did over the weekend once again by letting this racist event go by without him taking proper notice of it.
But Bernstein has offered this hyperbolic, freak out take on Trump since the man took office. In February, he fumed, “Trump is out there on his own leading a demagogic attack on the institutions of free democracy including the press,”
A transcript is below:
CNN Newsroom
8/14/17
2:55pmBROOKE BALDWIN: Nearly 48 hours after the crash, the president labeled these groups, finally, called them repugnant. Do you think it was too little, too late?
CARL BERNSTEIN: Obviously it shouldn't take a whole weekend to condemn Nazism, the idea that a president of the United States needs 48 hours to condemn Nazism is unheard of. But there's a much deeper story here, and that is we're in the midst of a presidential crisis, leadership crisis, such as this country has never experienced. The way you see it is by talking to Republicans— by people high up in the intelligence community and in the military who tell you very frankly that they see doubt the fitness of Donald Trump to be the president of the United States and that this episode has underscored it. And how do you deal with a president who morally, ethically, has no regard for the law in their view and therefore unfit to be president in a way that none of his predecessors were? That is the kind of conversation that sub-rosa is taking place in Washington today among movement conservatives, Republicans on the hill. It's not going to stop.
BALDWIN: Listening to you and we've talked a lot the last couple months about cracks in the Republican Party. Right? In the wake of the comments or lack thereof you were Republicans using not only using much more powerful of language, but also calling out the President. It’s my understanding, Carl you’ve been talking to your Republican sources who say the President crossed the line and there is no turning back. Can you tell me about what you're learning?
CARL BERNSTEIN: I think the dialogue within members of Congress among themselves has changed. They are looking at their own president as someone who they have serious doubts about his fitness, about his moral fitness, about his competence. There’s never been a discussion like this, including Watergate before. That doesn't mean that the President doesn't have his base which he appeals to and did over the weekend once again by letting this racist event go by without him taking proper notice of it. But this event has now galvanized people in the military, people on the hill, movement conservatives, but also this is about the press. We now have a story in which we as reporters need to be talking to high sources in the intelligence community, in the White House itself, in the Congress about the competency and fitness of the President of the United States. That's the real story here. It's a crisis.
