Republicans on Capitol Hill have been saying privately they believe President Donald Trump to be unfit for the presidency, journalist and CNN political analyst Carl Bernstein said Wednesday, claiming they are questioning his capabilities even more than former President Richard Nixon's had been.
"We have never had a president whose fitness has been questioned in this way, including Nixon who is regarded as unstable by many of his colleagues through his presidency," Bernstein, best known for his work investigating the Nixon-era Watergate scandal, told CNN's "New Day" program.
Republican Sens. Jeff Flake of Arizona and Bob Corker of Tennessee both publicly addressed their concerns about Trump on Tuesday, but Bernstein said they are just part a larger group of lawmakers who are complaining about the president.
"Republicans in private, great numbers of them, on Capitol Hill have been saying they believe this president is unstable and unfit to be the president of the United States," said Bernstein. "This discussion has been going among Republicans for months now."
The situation is also different, said Bernstein, because there has not been a time in "which members of both parties, but particularly the president's own party, in private, believe the president is unstable, unfit," said Bernstein, a frequent Trump critic. "Generals at the top of the command are saying the same thing, and top of the intelligence community, they are worried about this president's stability."
The attacks on Trump, said Bernstein, are not a partisan attack, as they're coming from Republicans and go "to the heart of whether the president of the United States is a danger to our values and the country and our place in the world. He is an aberrant president and human being, and that's what these individuals, if you listen to what Flake said very carefully, it's about aberrant."
Meanwhile, the nation is facing a large question, said Bernstein, not about a criminal matter as with Nixon, but "as Republicans, generals and intelligence chiefs are saying in private, the president is fit to be the president of the United States."
"We had Watergate with Nixon, a criminal president of the United States," Bernstein added. "This is an intersection of perhaps criminality, and also about fitness as a human being; fitness as a character in terms of one's character and competence and ability to be the president of the United States."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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