'We've never seen anything like this in our history.'
Trump's treasonous behavior this week means his behavior is far worse than even Richard Nixon's, according to Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein.
"We've never seen anything like this in our modern history," Bernstein stressed on CNN.
Bernstein's dark assessment comes in the wake of Trump's public capitulation to Russia on Monday at a joint press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
There, Trump launched attacks on U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies during a stunning and defining performance on the international stage.
Even some normally loyal Fox News hosts thought Trump went too far in appeasing Russia in the wake of its attack on U.S. elections in 2016.
"We are having serious people, both publicly and privately, Republicans and Democrats, questioning the loyalty of the President of the United States to our own country," Bernstein said.
"This is extraordinary. It never happened with Richard Nixon. No modern president has even been put in this position by himself, by his own actions, not by accusations of theirs."
Bernstein, working alongside Bob Woodward at the Washington Post, helped break the story of Nixon's Watergate scandal in the 1970s.
For decades, Nixon's presidency, which resembled a criminal enterprise run out of the West Wing, has often been used as the standard for the worst and most unethical activity by a president in modern American history.
But now Bernstein suggests Trump, just 17 months in office, has already surpassed Nixon's treachery by actively selling out American interests.
Following Trump's public capitulation on Monday, former CIA director John Brennan immediately suggested treason had been committed, claiming Trump’s press conference "rises to & exceeds the threshold of ‘high crimes & misdemeanors.’ It was nothing short of treasonous."
That talking point has since rapidly spread into the public debate.
"While the accusation of treason has been thrown around on the edges of the political debate from time to time, never in the modern era has it become part of the national conversation in such a prominent way," the New York Times reports.
The newspaper reports that Tuesday afternoon, the word "traitor" had been used on Twitter 800,000 times and the word "treason" about 1.2 million times.
Treason is specifically referenced in the Constitution under Article II: "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort."
That certainly seems to apply to Trump.
Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.
