What Bernstein called Trump’s “homicidal negligence” is only one of the many revelations in Woodward’s book, “Rage,” demonstrating Trump’s despicableness and unfitness for office. But lulling the public into a false sense of security about a grave threat to their health (and thus needlessly causing deaths) is by far the worst.
On CNN Wednesday, Bernstein suggested Trump should go straight to jail.
It is the smoking gun of his negligence. … We listen to him cover up this grave national emergency. This is 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 called out Republicans for their complicity, too. And he called on them to counter the “full assault” on the book we all know is coming from the White House.
Look, let's talk about what this really is. This is a kind of homicidal negligence. Thousands and thousands and thousands of people have lost their lives because the president put his own re-election interest, as we hear on the tapes and see throughout Bob's book, that he is putting his own narrow presidential re-election efforts in front of the safety, health, and wellbeing of the people of the United States. …
It's a dereliction of duty, recorded as no other dereliction of duty has been, even more so than the Nixon tapes in this instance.
So it's going to be very hard to see how this cannot be addressed by Republicans in particular and their candidate for president of the United States. The last time this happened, during the end of Nixon's presidency, the Republican leadership ... went to the White House and told Nixon he had to resign. And the facts here are even graver than in Watergate.
Sadly, Republicans are doing nothing of the sort, at least so far. CNN’s Manu Raju has a long list of Senate Republicans defending Trump or dodging questions. The defenders include Thom Tillis, Lindsey Graham, and Ron Johnson. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Joni Ernst, Martha McSally and Susan Collins were too cowardly to respond at all.
