Carl Bernstein Says Those Tapes of Donald Trump Trying To Steal the Election Are “Far Worse” Than Watergate

Audio was leaked this weekend of an hour-long call between Donald Trump and Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, during which Trump tried to get Raffensperger to help him overturn (meaning steal) Joe Biden’s win in the state’s presidential election.

The Washington Post published the full audio along with a transcript of the call, and it is wild. Trump rambles at extreme length, repeating every baseless, debunked conspiracy theory that’s popped up around this election, which while Raffensperger calmly tries to tell him that he’s just parroting nonsense.

The tapes immediately bring to mind Richard Nixon’s infamous Watergate tapes but in this case, history isn’t repeating itself. History has found a way to evolve into something even worse. At least, that’s what’s happening according to legendary Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein, and I guess he would know.

Speaking to CNN, Bernstein said this call is “not déjà vu. This was something far worse than occurred in Watergate.”

“We have both a criminal president of the United States in Donald Trump and a subversive president of the United States at the same time in this one person, subverting the very basis of our democracy and willing to act criminally in that subversion,” he said.

“This is the ultimate smoking gun tape,” Bernstein went on to say. “It is the tape with the evidence of what this president is willing to do to undermine the electoral system and illegally, improperly and immorally try to instigate a coup in which he remains the president of the United States.

“In any other presidency, this tape would be evidence enough to result in the impeachment of the president of the United States, his conviction in the Senate … and really an immediate call by the members of Congress, including of his own party, that he resign immediately.”

But, as Bernstein notes, that’s not going to happen, and it’s one of the major reason why this is so much worse than Watergate.

“We’re not going to hear that,” Bernstein said. “We might from a few Republicans, but that’s what’s really called for here. And the one thing we should recall from Watergate was that the heroes of Watergate were Republicans who would not tolerate Richard Nixon’s conduct.”

With a dozen Republican senators having gone on the record to say they’ll vote against Joe Biden’s certification this week, based on absolutely nothing but Trump’s baseless claims of nonexistent voter fraud, I don’t think we can expect many of those “heroes” this time around.

(image: Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)

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Vivian Kane

Vivian Kane (she/her) is the Senior News Editor at The Mary Sue, where she's been writing about politics and entertainment (and all the ways in which the two overlap) since the dark days of late 2016. Born in San Francisco and radicalized in Los Angeles, she now lives in Kansas City, Missouri, where she gets to put her MFA to use covering the local theatre scene. She is the co-owner of The Pitch, Kansas City’s alt news and culture magazine, alongside her husband, Brock Wilbur, with whom she also shares many cats.

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