Republican Senators Are Too Chickenshit to Openly Admit Their Discontent With Trump…Except to Carl Bernstein

Veteran journalist Carl Bernstein has some Republican Party tea that he’s happy to spill all over Twitter. On Sunday night, Bernstein tweeted that 21 Republican senators have “repeatedly expressed extreme contempt for Trump & his fitness to be POTUS” in conversations with colleagues, lobbyists, and White House aides.

The list of Senators are as follows: Lamar Alexander, Roy Blunt, Mike Braun Richard Burr, Susan Collins, John Cornyn, Chuck Grassley, Martha McSally, Jerry Moran, Lisa Murkowski, Rob Portman, Pat Roberts, Mitt Romney, Marco Rubio, Ben Sasse, Rick Scott, Tim Scott, Richard Shelby, John Thune, Pat Toomey, and Todd Young.

“I’m not violating any pledge of journalistic confidentially in reporting this,” Bernstein insisted.

He also named a number of the senators earlier in the day during an appearance on CNN’s New Day after calling Trump’s refusal to concede in the 2020 presidential election the work of a “mad king in the final days of his reign.”

“[He’s] willing to scorch the earth of his country and bring down the whole system—to undermine our whole democracy, strip it of its legitimacy, poison the confidence of our people and our institutions and the constitition—for Donald Trump’s own petulant, selfish, rabid ends,” Bernstein said.

And Republican senators are happy to let this continue.

While a handful of senators, such as Romney and Sasse, have gone on the record to counter Trump’s claims of an electoral victory over President-elect Joe Biden, it comes after nearly three weeks of post-election misinformation tactics in both the courts and on social media by Trump and his allies. Most on Bernstein’s list of disaffected Republicans have yet to offer public statements weighing in on the rigged election narrative that President Trump and his legal team continue to push—a story which, polling shows, half of Republicans believe.

Conveniently, Republican Senator Majority Leader Mitch McConnell—arguably the most powerful politician in the country—has remained mum about this nonsense. But even more convenient is how the aforementioned senators were able to register their discontent without doing the responsible thing and speaking out against Trump and the more fanatical facets of the party publicly.

“Their craven public silence has helped enable Trump’s most grievous conduct,” Bernstein said in a tweet. That’s putting it lightly. Frankly, the Republican Party is full of chickenshit politicians who are more afraid of the wrath of an outgoing president than the nation they claim to hold so dear. Their complicity helps delay the presidential transition process, which, in the middle of a deadly pandemic that is killing thousands of Americans daily, has never been more vital. But why prioritize human lives when you can fret over Trump calling you a RINO on Twitter instead?