Remember Carl Bernstein’s list of 21 Republican senators who privately expressed “extreme contempt” for President Trump? The veteran investigative journalist says the actual tally is much larger.
The Watergate sleuth made the assertion during an episode of the Battleground podcast published Monday in which Steve Schmidt, a co-host of the show and a longtime GOP strategist who left the Republican Party in 2018 to protest its embrace of Trump, made headlines for announcing he is registering as a Democrat.
“We can get to the story I did about the 21 Republican senators, and the number is actually much greater than that, who really despise and disdain Donald Trump and have been so craven that they, except for a couple of them, they won’t say a peep,” Bernstein said. “And they have enabled, and [Senate Majority Leader Mitch] McConnell, obviously, has enabled Trump’s most egregious excesses.”
It was an offhand remark as Bernstein talked about a “huge cultural force” of misinformation and disinformation in the United States, and he didn’t expound upon who else is on his list.
In late November, Bernstein, who exposed the Watergate scandal in the 1970s with Bob Woodward using anonymous sources while at the Washington Post, unveiled a list of names of Republican senators, who he said, “With few exceptions, their craven public silence has helped enable Trump’s most grievous conduct” contesting the results of the election with claims of widespread fraud that have not held up in court.
On the list were: Ohio’s Rob Portman, Tennessee’s Lamar Alexander, Nebraska’s Ben Sasse, Missouri’s Roy Blunt, Maine’s Susan Collins, Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski, Texas’s John Cornyn, South Dakota’s John Thune, Utah’s Mitt Romney, Indiana’s Mike Braun, Indiana’s Todd Young, South Carolina’s Tim Scott, Florida’s Rick Scott, Florida’s Marco Rubio, Iowa’s Chuck Grassley, North Carolina’s Richard Burr, Pennsylvania’s Pat Toomey, Arizona’s Martha McSally (who has since left office), Kansas’s Jerry Moran, Kansas’s Pat Roberts, and Alabama’s Richard Shelby.
Multiple senators publicly disputed his reporting when the Washington Examiner reached out to all their offices.
“This is more false news from a CNN political analyst, as I was one of President Trump’s top defenders during impeachment and strongly support his legal efforts to ensure that every legal vote is counted,” Braun told the Washington Examiner.
“From the day I stood beside President Trump as he was sworn in as president, he and I have had a good relationship,” Blunt said in a statement. “He has worked effectively with the Senate to enact significant accomplishments as president.”
The offices of Rick Scott, Portman, Grassley, Young, and Tim Scott also pushed back on Bernstein’s list.
Other GOP senators have publicly crossed Trump, including Mitt Romney, and since Bernstein came out with the list, top Republicans, including McConnell on Tuesday, have acknowledged Joe Biden as president-elect despite Trump continuing to hold out.
But Bernstein did receive a boost from Woodward, who has written two books about Trump’s presidency and is working on a third with Washington Post colleague Robert Costa. “I know as Carl knows privately, lots of these senators will just say they want to get Trump out … They want to move on, and they’re keeping their fingers crossed,” Woodward said during a CNN interview earlier this month.
