Veteran reporter Carl Bernstein is calling President Trump “a danger to national security” and “increasingly unstable” as House Democrats advance their impeachment inquiry against the president.
The former Washington Post reporter and current CNN political analyst made the remarks Monday evening while discussing an unnamed intelligence official who is reportedly weighing whether or not to file a complaint regarding Trump’s contacts with Ukraine’s president regarding former Vice President and potential 2020 opponent Joe Biden.
{mosads}”Well, I think it’s going to be both dramatic, and he is going to have apparently firsthand knowledge of what transpired here. I think that what all of this becomes more and more is considerable evidence building that we have a fundamentally corrupt president who is a danger to national security, has undermined our democratic system, and is increasingly unstable,” he said.
“I know that many Republicans are looking at this and are aware of a good part of that equation if not all of that. Whether they will ever say it aloud is something else. And I think there are people in the White House who recognize that,” continued Bernstein, 75. ”There are Republicans who are aware of all of the things that I just said on an evidentiary level. And that’s where we’re heading in a kind of really unprecedented crisis when you put all those elements together.”
Trump is the focus of an impeachment inquiry over allegations that he withheld military aid to pressure Ukraine to investigate Biden, who during the Obama administration pressed for the firing of a Ukraine prosecutor who had drawn the ire of the U.S. government and its allies in the West.
Bernstein has been highly critical of Trump since he took office in 2017, often declaring on CNN that the Trump presidency is “worse than Watergate,” a story he helped break with Bob Woodward more than 40 years ago.
“I think it’s time to recognize that what we are watching in the Trump presidency is worse than Watergate,” Bernstein told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer in August 2018. “It’s worse than Watergate, as I say, because the system worked in Watergate.”
Trump has fired back at Bernstein, calling him “sloppy” and “a degenerate fool” on Twitter.