Bernstein: Congress should hold hearings on Trump’s fitness for office

Veteran journalist Carl Bernstein on Thursday called for Congress to hold hearings on President Trump’s fitness for office.

“What we need here are, finally, I think, some hearings in which an executive session or open session, those around the president of the United States are questioned about the fitness of Trump to be the president of the United States,” Bernstein, a CNN political analyst, said on the network.

{mosads}Bernstein justified his call by citing excerpts from former reporting partner Bob Woodward’s new book and an op-ed from an anonymous senior Trump administration official who argued that the president’s actions are “detrimental” to the health of the nation.

Both the book and the op-ed have painted a portrait of an administration that is increasingly at odds with the president’s impulses. 

“What’s really going on here is that Woodward’s book, and the contents of what is in the anonymous piece in The New York Times is that those closest to the president of the United States are saying we must save the country from the president,” Berstein said. 

On Wednesday, a senior Trump administration official wrote an anonymous op-ed in the Times in which they blasted the president’s “amorality” and criticized him as anti-trade and anti-democracy.

“The root of the problem is the president’s amorality. Anyone who works with him knows he is not moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision making,” the official wrote, adding that aides work around Trump to make sure his desires are not enforced. 

Similarly, Woodward’s book, “Fear: Trump in the White House,” reported that the White House was having a “nervous breakdown” under Trump, offering various anecdotes of aides trying to blunt decisions by Trump.

Among the anecdotes, former top economic adviser Gary Cohn is reported to have removed paperwork, unnoticed, from Trump’s desk that the president intended to sign to withdraw the U.S. from trade agreements. 

Trump and the White House have responded by blasting both Woodward and The New York Times. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders called on the anonymous official to resign. 

“I’m draining the Swamp, and the Swamp is trying to fight back,” Trump tweeted Wednesday night. “Don’t worry, we will win!”

Bernstein’s call has been echoed by others, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).

“If senior administration officials think the president of the United States is not able to do his job, then they should invoke the 25th Amendment,” Warren told CNN. 

Like Woodward, Bernstein has been specifically targeted by Trump for his reporting. Last week the president attacked Bernstein as a “degenerate fool” over a CNN report that he co-bylined that said Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, was willing to testify to special counsel Robert Mueller that Trump knew about a 2016 Trump Tower meeting ahead of time.