Veteran reporter Carl Bernstein accused former President Donald Trump of being a “war criminal.”
Bernstein joined CNN’s Brian Stelter for Sunday’s broadcast of “Reliable Sources,” and argued that Trump represented “a kind of delusional madness … on a scale and a scope that we ever never experienced in an American president in our history.” (RELATED: Carl Bernstein: Mueller Has The ‘Power’ To Change America’s Perceptions Of Trump)
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Bernstein prefaced his comments by saying that he was not a psychiatrist, but proceeded to argue that “some degree of narcissism” could explain how the former president kept a foothold in the Republican Party even after losing the 2020 election.
“When you’re talking about Trump, we’re obviously talking about a kind of delusional madness — such as General Milley was talking about that — that’s on a scale and a scope that we ever never experienced in an American president in our history,” Bernstein said, adding, “I think we need to calmly step back and, maybe, look at Trump in a different context. He is our own American war criminal of a kind we’ve never experienced before.”
Stelter pressed Bernstein to elaborate on his comment, asking what he meant when he said Trump was a “war criminal.”
Arguing that Trump’s actions reached the level of “crimes against humanity,” Bernstein claimed that the evidence was in the number of military officials who had reportedly voiced concerns about him, especially following the Capitol riot on Jan. 6.
“The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has now compared Trump — not the press, not reporters comparing Trump to Hitler. But rather the head of the American military comparing him and his movement to brownshirts, to the Reichstag fire,” Bernstein continued. “This is a huge wake-up call to this country when General Milley, the head of the American military, has said this, and it fits as a piece with something so extraordinary in our history. It’s not political, Trump is not just political, he transcends the political, and we need to start looking at his crimes in that context.”