[ad_1]
Veteran Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein has called 21 Republican senators, he says, have “repeatedly expressed extreme contempt for [Donald] Trump and his aptitude ”for the position.
As Trump continued to try to subvert the results of a presidential election, he clearly lost to Joe Biden, Bernstein said on Twitter he “did not violate any promise of journalistic confidentiality.”
His information, he said, came from “colleagues, staff members, lobbyists [and] White House aides ”.
Then he named names.
They were: Rob Portman (Ohio), Lamar Alexander (Tennessee), Ben Sasse (Nebraska), Roy Blunt (Missouri), Susan Collins (Maine), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), John Cornyn (Texas), John Thune (South Dakota) )), Mitt Romney (Utah), Mike Braun and Todd Young (Indiana), Tim Scott (South Carolina), Rick Scott and Marco Rubio (Florida), Chuck Grassley (Iowa), Richard Burr (North Carolina), Pat Toomey (Pennsylvania)), Martha McSally (Arizona), Jerry Moran and Pat Roberts (Kansas) and Richard Shelby (Alabama).
The list contained important republican figures like Thune, the whip of the majority; Rubio, acting president of the intelligence committee; and Grassley, former chairman of the judicial committee.
Some on Bernstein’s list, Sasse, Cornyn, Collins and Murkowski among them, have publicly criticized Trump. Romney, Rubio, Murkowski, Toomey and Collins have recognized Biden as president-elect.
Bernstein, 76, worked with Bob Woodward on the Washington Post’s coverage of the Watergate scandal, which led to the resignation of Richard Nixon in 1974.
Woodward’s coverage of Trump has produced two best-selling books, Fear and Rage, which have been based on anonymous sources highly critical of Trump and, in the latter case, on the president’s own recorded and highly damaging thoughts.
Speaking to CNN on Friday, Bernstein said: “Many, if not most, of these people, 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 “.
That outcome now hinges on two runoff elections in Georgia, on January 5.
A spokesperson for Rick Scott told Forbes the list was “silly and does not guarantee a real answer. Needless to say, Carl Bernstein has no idea what he’s talking about. “
But Bernstein wrote that “with few exceptions,” the senators’ “cowardly public silence has helped enable Trump’s most painful conduct, including undermining and discrediting America’s electoral system.”
[ad_2]
