BERNSTEIN: We are listening to the president of the United States, on tape, deliberately undermining the security -- the national security of the United States, the health and wellbeing of the people of the United States, and he's doing this knowingly, in real time.

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: At this point if the Republican leadership, McConnell, McCarthy, and others try to contradict this obvious, grave dereliction of duty by the president of the United States that is captured on tape, they, too, are responsible for what has happened here.

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.