The left basically had two narratives for President Trump’s actions for the past 4 years: 1) he’s worse than Hitler and 2) what he did was worse than Watergate. Carl Bernstein, half of the duo of Woodward and Bernstein who broke the Nixon Watergate scandal, seems to be under the impression that everything Trump did was worse than Watergate. Here’s a rundown of how many times he invoked this ridiculous comparison:
Leaked audio of an innocuous phone call between President Trump and Georgia’s Secretary of State has democrats calling for impeachment and the liberal media crying about the destruction of democracy. Not surprisingly, Bernstein thinks it’s worse than Watergate:
.@carlbernstein, the man who co-broke Watergate, says of the newly released Trump tapes, “It’s not déjà vu, this was something far worse than Watergate.” pic.twitter.com/MXBupvjqpx
— The Recount (@therecount) January 3, 2021
“It’s 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 with this one person, subverting the very basis of our democracy and willing to act criminally in that subversion,” said Bernstein.
But it is déjà vu, because this was Bernstein commenting on audio released by his partner Bob Woodward allegedly showing that President Trump downplayed the coronavirus:
12) And now this is graver than Watergate
“The facts here are even graver than in Watergate” — here’s Carl Bernstein (who broke Watergate with Woodward) suggesting the Trump tapes are even worse than the Nixon tapes pic.twitter.com/XdgWq6vkKp
— Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) September 26, 2020
“It’s a dereliction of duty, recorded as no other presidential dereliction of duty has been, even more so than the Nixon tapes in this instance. 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,” Bernstein said.
And the faux Ukraine scandal cooked up by the democrats? Yup, Bernstein thought it was worse than Watergate too:
Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein tells @EricaRHill that Pres. Trump has at every turn “served the interests of Russia, a hostile foreign power.”
“It’s what makes this so different than Watergate and perhaps worse in some regards.” pic.twitter.com/teZchnw66d
— CNN Newsroom (@CNNnewsroom) November 21, 2019
“It’s what makes this so different than Watergate and perhaps worse in some regards,” said Bernstein.
When the Russian collusion hoax was still a thing, Bernstein had some thoughts on what it was worse than:
“What we are watching in the Trump presidency is worse than Watergate. It’s worse than Watergate, as I say, because the system worked in Watergate. The heroes in Watergate were Republicans who demanded that the president be held accountable, who demanded that he be transparent, who demanded to know what did the president know and when did he know it, and who conducted a bipartisan investigation that led, in fact, to understanding and finding out what Nixon had done, whereas the Republicans on Capitol Hill thus far have done almost everything they can to impede and undermine the legitimate investigation. So it’s a totally different and much more dangerous situation,” Bernstein said.
And finally, Fox News reports that Bernstein was invoking this from the very beginning:
Bernstein also invoked Watergate while knocking Trump’s chumminess with Russian President Vladimir Putin during the 2018 joint press conference in Helsinki, referred to the 2017 firing of FBI Director James Comey as “potentially more dangerous” than Watergate, and he even made Nixon comparisons before Trump took office, claiming in December 2016 that “Richard Nixon was nothing, in terms of lying, compared to what we have seen from Donald Trump.”
Geez, is there anything this guy doesn’t think was worse than Watergate? Well yes, actually. As also pointed out by Fox, there was one scandal that didn’t rise to the level of worse:
However, during the 2016 election, Bernstein did sing a different tune, only to fact-check Trump’s claim that Hillary Clinton’s email scandal was “bigger than Watergate,” saying that “no way” was the comparison accurate.
“Watergate was about a criminal president of the United States who presided over a criminal administration from the day he took office to the day he left,” Bernstein said during a panel discussion in October 2016, though later stressing that Clinton’s conduct was still “reckless.”
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Carl Bernstein broke a story in the 1970’s and he’s been riding that fame ever since. His “worse than Watergate” schtick is all he has.
When everything is worse than Watergate, being worse than Watergate loses all meaning and that’s a pretty good metaphor for Bernstein’s lack of relevancy.
