Carl Bernstein has some strong words for what his former colleague's revelations mean for the Trump presidency and democracy itself.
On Wednesday The Washington Post published a preview of Bob Woodward's forthcoming book, Rage, in which Trump told Woodward in March that he knew COVID-19 was serious but "wanted to always play it down." Six months later, 190,000 people have died in the U.S. from the virus, and Woodward has just revealed that Trump's "homicidal negligence" is to blame, Bernstein told CNN.
Bernstein and Woodward famously reported out the Watergate scandal that led to former President Richard Nixon's resignation. But "the facts here are even graver than in Watergate," Bernstein continued, because this "dereliction of duty" has been recorded like never before. "Thousands and thousands and thousands of people died" because Trump is "putting his own re-election before the safety, health, and well-being of the people of the United States. We've never had a president who's done anything like this before," Bernstein said.
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It's all going to go down as "one of the great presidential felonies of all time, maybe the greatest presidential felony, and we have the smoking gun tape of the president committing the felony," Bernstein continued. Watch all of Bernstein's scathing appearance below. Kathryn Krawczyk
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