Carl Bernstein claims three KC area senators have privately expressed disdain for Trump
Investigative journalist Carl Bernstein has named 21 Republican senators that he says have privately expressed “extreme contempt” for President Donald Trump, including three from the Kansas City region.
Bernstein, whose reporting on the Watergate scandal for The Washington Post helped lead to President Richard Nixon’s resignation in 1974, posted the list of Republican senators to Twitter Sunday evening.
Bernstein, now a political commentator for CNN, said he was not violating any confidentiality agreements with sources in reporting the list, contending that the senators in private conversations with “colleagues, staff members, lobbyists, W. House aides–have repeatedly expressed extreme contempt for Trump & his fitness to be POTUS.”
Among the 21 senators Bernstein named were Missouri Republican Sen. Roy Blunt, a member of GOP leadership, Kansas Republican Sen. Jerry Moran and Kansas Republican Sen. Pat Roberts, who is retiring in January after 40 years in Congress.
Blunt pushed back on Bernstein’s characterization in a statement Monday afternoon.
“From the day I stood beside President Trump as he was sworn in as president, he and I have had a good relationship. He has worked effectively with the Senate to enact significant accomplishments as president,” said Blunt, who as Senate Rules chairman pushed for changes to speed up the judicial confirmation process for Trump’s nominees.
Spokespeople for Moran and Roberts did not immediately respond to a question about Bernstein’s claim.
C.J. Grover, spokesman of the Kansas Republican Party, said on Twitter, “Zero credence should be given to this nonsense.”
Most of the senators named by Bernstein have avoided acknowledging President-elect Joe Biden’s victory over Trump in the 2020 election. They have also stayed quiet as Trump makes unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud to dispute the results.
“With few exceptions, their craven public silence has helped enable Trump’s most grievous conduct—including undermining and discrediting the US the electoral system,” said Bernstein, a Pulitzer Prize winner.
Roberts and Moran have mostly avoided talking about the outcome of the presidential election.
Moran told Politico last week that he would wait on commenting until he got his “thoughts cleared on a piece of paper and in my brain.”
Blunt, the No. 4 Republican in Senate leadership, has said he thinks Biden should receive intelligence briefings, something the Trump administration prevented until reversing course Monday evening. But he has also said Trump has the right to exhaust his legal options in contesting the election and even suggested that it was possible he’d won.
Moran said in his Monday newsletter to constituents that the normal transition process with national security briefings should move forward. He avoided mentioning Biden by name, but he urged for the acceptance of results of a free and fair election.
“It is important that the election results be accurate. President Trump has the right to request recounts and can utilize the courts to determine the integrity of the election,” Moran said.
“That process will soon be completed, and we must all respect the results of a free and fair election. We cannot afford to spend the next four years divided over who won the election or denying the legitimacy of the president as was the case for President Trump throughout his presidency.”
All three Kansas City area senators on Bernstein’s list voted to acquit Trump during his impeachment trial earlier this year— as did every Senate Republican with the exception of Utah Sen. Mitt Romney.
Roberts has voted with Trump more than 95 % of the time, but he has occasionally voiced disagreement on trade policy. He defended Michigan Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow, his colleague on the Senate Agriculture Committee, against Trump’s attacks during the 2018 Farm Bill negotiations.
Blunt and Moran are up for re-election in 2022 and could be vulnerable to primary challenges from candidates backed by Trump and his base.
Both opposed Trump’s invocation of emergency powers in 2019 to shift funds for military construction projects to his proposed border wall.
Blunt has voted with Trump nearly 94 % of the time and Moran has voted with Trump nearly 84 %, according to FiveThirtyEight’s vote tracker.
Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley, who was not on Bernstein’s list and votes with the president 85% of the time, spoke favorably last week about Trump’s legal efforts to contest the election.
“The president believes that he won. He thinks that there is or at the very least he thinks that there are serious concerns about fraud,” Hawley told the Senate press pool Friday.
“He’s presenting his evidence. I think it’s all out there and people, people (are) going be able to judge and decide themselves.”
But Trump’s legal team has provided scant evidence in court to supports its claims of widespread fraud and judges have shown little patience for the unsubstantiated accusations.
A federal judge in Pennsylvania Saturday rejected the Trump campaign’s lawsuit seeking to block certification in the swing state with a scathing ruling, saying the Trump’s legal team’s unsupported claims “cannot justify the disenfranchisement of a single voter, let alone all the voters of its sixth most populated state. Our people, laws, and institutions demand more.”
This story was originally published November 23, 2020 at 12:04 PM with the headline "Carl Bernstein claims three KC area senators have privately expressed disdain for Trump."
