Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein lists 21 GOP senators

Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein lists 21 GOP senators who have ‘privately’ expressed their ‘extreme contempt’ for Donald Trump

Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein has called out 21 Republican senators who he says have expressed ‘extreme contempt’ for President Trump in private
Bernstein accused the senators of ‘enabling Trump’ with their ‘craven silence’
List includes Mitt Romney and Marco Rubio, who are known critics of Trump
But also includes Florida senator Rick Scott, who backed Trump during election

By Chris Pleasance and Emily Webber For Mailonline

Published: 04:03 EST, 23 November 2020 | Updated: 09:13 EST, 23 November 2020

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Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein has called out 21 Republican senators who he says have expressed ‘extreme contempt’ for President Trump in private – but have refused to air their grievances in public.

Bernstein accused the senators – including the likes of Mitt Romney, Marco Rubio, Chuck Grassley and Susan Collins – of a ‘craven silence’ that has ‘enabled Trump’s most grievous conduct’.

That includes ‘undermining and discrediting the US electoral system’ Bernstein said, taking aim at Trump’s refusal to concede to Joe Biden while claiming ‘massive fraud’ – a claim that his legal team has failed to substantiate.

‘Many if not most of these individuals, from what I have been told, were happy to see Donald Trump defeated in this election as long as the Senate could be controlled by the Republicans,’ Bernstein said during an appearance on CNN.

Carl Bernstein (pictured in 2018), the former Washington Post journalist who reported alongside Bob Woodward, called out Trump on Sunday night and named the 21 GOP senators who have expressed disdain for ‘his fitness to be President of the United States’

The tweet, which garnered 37,600 likes, read: ‘I’m not violating any pledge of journalistic confidentially in reporting this: 21 Republican Sens–in convos w/ colleagues, staff members, lobbyists, W. House aides–have repeatedly expressed extreme contempt for Trump and his fitness to be POTUS. (1/3)’

He continued: ‘The 21 GOP Senators who have privately expressed their disdain for Trump are: Portman, Alexander, Sasse, Blunt, Collins, Murkowski, Cornyn, Thune, Romney, Braun, Young, Tim Scott, Rick Scott, Rubio, Grassley, Burr, Toomey, McSally, Moran, Roberts, Shelby.

‘With few exceptions, their craven public silence has helped enable Trump’s most grievous conduct—including undermining and discrediting the US the electoral system.’

Bernstein is the the former Washington Post journalist who reported alongside Bob Woodward to expose the Watergate scandal which led to former President Richard Nixon’s resignation in 1974 before he could be impeached.

The tweet, which garnered 37,600 likes, read: ‘I’m not violating any pledge of journalistic confidentially in reporting this’

Speaking on CNN he said: ‘Let me name 15 or so Republican senators and what I am doing is not violating journalistic principle because they have told me what I am about to say.

‘But for two or three years I have talked to members of staff of the senators, members of committees, staff people, aides, assistants, people who have worked for these people – let’s look at 15 or so of these Republican senators who really disdain and even despise Donald Trump, have said so to each other.’

It comes after Bernstein accused Donald Trump of creating ‘the first grifter presidency’ in US history after the New York Times lifted the lid on the president’s years of alleged tax avoidance and extensive debt.

Bernstein called the bombshell Times report ‘the smoking gun of a pervasively criminal presidency’ in an interview with CNN.

‘Donald Trump and his family are grifters,’ he said. ‘He has created the first grifter presidency in the history of the United States in which his purpose in running for the presidency and exercising the powers of the presidency – the fundamental reason is to bail himself and his family out.’

Mitt Romney, a prominent Trump critic within the Republican party, and Marco Rubio, who ran against Trump in the 2016 presidential race, were named among the chief critics

The Times report, based on nearly two decades’ worth of Trump’s tax returns, asserted that the president paid just $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017 – and zero federal income taxes in 10 of the 15 years prior – because he reported losing more money than he made.

Bernstein also publicly attacked the president on CNN last month.

On September 14 he slammed Trump as a ‘homicidal president’ and said he was hosting ‘homicidal assemblies’ with his indoor campaign rallies during the coronavirus pandemic.

‘You’re witnessing a homicidal president convening, purposefully, a homicidal assembly to help him get reelected instead of protecting the health and welfare of the United States, including supporters whose lives he is willing to sacrifice,’ Bernstein told CNN’s Anderson Cooper.

‘Here is this president, who has staked part of his presidency on the right to life, particularly of the unborn, and every day he has sacrificed the lives of thousands of Americans because he is unwilling to deal honestly, forthrightly, meaningfully, with the greatest domestic crisis in our post-war history in this country.

‘Now we’ve seen in front of us, tonight, this homicidal assembly that the president of the United States has called his supporters to be sacrificial lambs. It’s astonishing.’

Trump responded to that rebuke by calling Bernstein a ‘total nut job’.