Carl Bernstein: Republican leaders now privately saying they’re finished with “unfit” Donald Trump

| 7:41 pm EDT August 15, 2017
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Carl Bernstein knows a thing or two about the ouster of U.S. Presidents, as he helped lead the charge in getting Richard Nixon ousted from office in the Watergate scandal. Now Bernstein, still a political reporter decades later, says that Republican leaders are finally saying in private that they’re finished with Donald Trump after his utterly deranged pro-white supremacist, anti-George Washington speech today.

Here’s what Bernstein shared via his Twitter account after Trump’s Tuesday speech: “Important Republicans / conservatives / Intel-military hi-ups increasingly saying in private that Donald Trump is unfit to be president [because] of lack of ethics, competence, ‘temperament/stability.’ Reporters should find out how pervasive such talk may be.” (link). The question now becomes how this translates into action. The GOP leadership has long been hesitant to begin impeachment proceedings against Trump, for fear that it might cost them as many votes in the midterms as it would gain them. But after the events of the past few days, that math may have changed.

Trump’s approval rating was already precariously in the mid to low thirties before his initial botched response to the Charlottesville white supremacist terrorist attack. The polls still largely have not yet been updated to reflect the public’s reaction to Trump’s initial response, and now he’s gone and made it even worse for himself with today’s latest speech. If he drops into the twenties over the next week, it would give the Republican leadership much more cover for moving forward with impeachment. There is also the 25th Amendment.

Donald Trump partly stacked his cabinet with people who were personally loyal to him, seemingly in a preemptive attempt at fending off the 25th Amendment, which requires the involvement of the Vice President and the majority of the cabinet. But in light of today’s latest debacle, it’s now entirely possible that Mike Pence could wrangle enough cabinet votes to oust Trump immediately. We’re in uncharted territory, so we’ll see what happens next.