Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander was the last of four moderate Republicans the liberal media had held out hope for voting to hear more witnesses in the impeachment trial. But shortly after the Senate trial ended the question and answer portion, the Senator made it known he had finished hearing the evidence and was ready to vote. Upon hearing this development, CNNers (particularly those with a connection to Watergate) suffered a collective meltdown.
Before Alexander let his intentions known, former Washington Post journalist Carl Bernstein opined about how the Senator had “has a chance to be a real hero and to exhibit some real courage.”
Bernstein suggested that Republican conduct throughout impeachment was so terrible that it amounted to a “travesty” that could only be undone if “four of these senators decide they will not be party to a cover-up, that they will exhibit some courage, there is a chance that the Republican Party, if they pull some other people with them, might redeem themselves.”
After Bernstein declared that former National Security Advisor John Bolton was this impeachment’s John Dean, Dean himself spoke glowingly about Alexander. “Well, I've been thinking about Lamar Alexander, who I knew from the Nixon White House. The Lamar Alexander I knew would vote for witnesses. So, I'm curious to see what all these years have done to him,” he said.
Well, Dean didn’t need to wait long because around the top of the 11:00 p.m. hour Alexander was out with his position. And oh how Dean’s attitude changed, decrying his former colleague’s decision as “not a profile in courage by Lamar.”
“And I'm a little surprised. Not totally. But I keep thinking this will be the most significant vote he makes in his career and is one of the last votes he'll make. And I -- obviously he's not standing for reelection. He's standing down. And I think this is kind of a sad endnote for his career,” Dean spat.
Luckily, former RNC chief of staff and conservative CNN political commentator Mike Shields was on hand to shut Dean down, leaving him speechless (click “expand”):
SHIELD: Okay, so you disagree with him but why isn’t it a profile in courage? Because you disagree with him?
DEAN: No. No. No. I think--
SHIELDS: Hang on, he's not standing for reelection.
DEAN: That's right.
SHIELDS: He's not a MAGA hat-wearing Trump supporter, he's a long time public servant, he was the governor of Tennessee, he was the education secretary under Bush 41, worked with you in the White House prior to that. And he just gave a very principled statement saying I disagree with the President's behavior. He has no political reasons to do anything other than his conscience. And you don’t think that’s a vote of courage.
“And he's going to be criticized by people on this station and all over the media, I think it's a huge vote of – stand of courage on his part. He's going to get eviscerated by people like you,” Shields concluded.
But minutes later, Bernstein shouted from the rooftops: “It's a cover-up. That's what the Senate has now done. They have covered up what the President of the United States has done in his grievous action…”
Still proclaiming it to be a “cover-up, plain and simple,” he lashed out at the Senate by calling it the “so-called world's greatest deliberative body, which is now known -- we can see how deliberative it is.” After claiming we were living through “a really shameful episode in our history that's going to read down for many, many years,” he chided Harvard Law professor and Trump lawyer Alan Dershowitz’s defense as a “catechism for the cult of Trump.”
Queue the Cult 45 memes. This is CNN.
The transcript is below, click "expand" to read:
CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360
January 30, 2020
10:51:56 p.m. EasternANDERSON COOPER: Carl, I mean, it is fascinating, it all comes down right now in this next hour or two, Lamar Alexander and then Lisa Murkowski.
CARL BERNSTEIN: It does and he has a chance to be a real hero and to exhibit some real courage. What we have seen thus far is a partisan impeachment. Partisan because the Republican Party has shown absolutely no interest in establishing the truth here.
Rather, what we've seen are attempts to continue to make the issue Joe Biden, the whistleblower, everything but the conduct of the President of the United States. It's been a travesty. Let's -- and it's been a cover-up. And if, perhaps, four of these senators decide they will not be party to a cover-up, that they will exhibit some courage, there is a chance that the Republican Party, if they pull some other people with them, might redeem themselves.
But this is something for the ages because the whole idea—I’m sitting next to John Dean, John Dean was the critical witness in Watergate.
These Republicans have been saying they have no witnesses, they have no -- no testimony that the Democrats have produced that would show us in the room with the President that he had ordered this quid pro quo. Well, they've got Bolton, who is the John Dean, if they want to have him.
COOPER: John Dean on this night, what are you thinking?
JOHN DEAN: Well, I've been thinking about Lamar Alexander, who I knew from the Nixon White House. The Lamar Alexander I knew would vote for witnesses. So, I'm curious to see what all these years have done to him.
(…)
11:14:15 p.m. Eastern
COOPER: John Dean?
DEAN This was not a profile in courage by Lamar. And I'm a little surprised. Not totally. But I keep thinking this will be the most significant vote he makes in his career and is one of the last votes he'll make. And I -- obviously he's not standing for reelection. He's standing down. And I think this is kind of a sad endnote for his career.
MIKE SHIELD: Okay, so you disagree with him but why isn’t it a profile in courage? Because you disagree with him?
DEAN: No. No. No. I think--
SHIELDS: Hang on, he's not standing for reelection.
DEAN: That's right.
SHIELDS: He's not a MAGA hat-wearing Trump supporter, he's a long time public servant, he was the governor of Tennessee, he was the education secretary under Bush 41, worked with you in the White House prior to that. And he just gave a very principled statement saying I disagree with the President's behavior. He has no political reasons to do anything other than his conscience.
And you don’t think that’s a vote of courage. And he's going to be criticized by people on this station and all over the media, I think it's a huge vote of – stand of courage on his part. He's going to get eviscerated by people like you.
(…)
BERNSTEIN: And it's a cover-up. That's what the Senate has now done. They have covered up what the President of the United States has done in his grievous action when they had the ability to find out more. And reach a bipartisan, as it were, decision if we could hear from the witnesses, if Mr. Bolton could come in and tell us, is there anything else there? No. Maybe it would be exonerating.
This is a cover-up, plain and simple. And there has been no attempt throughout this proceeding by the Republicans in this Senate of the United States, the so-called world's greatest deliberative body, which is now known -- we can see how deliberative it is. That we have seen now a really shameful episode in our history that's going to read down for many, many years, particularly because of the Dershowitz catechism for the cult of Trump. That's an astonishing assertion Dershowitz made about what the President can do.
(…)
