Carl Bernstein believes tape of Trump seeking votes from election official is the 'ultimate smoking gun'

Pulitzer Prize-winning Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein appeared Sunday on CNN Newsroom With Fredericka Whitfield and discussed the recording of President Donald Trump asking Georgia’s secretary of state to “find 11,780 votes” during a phone conversation a day earlier.

Bernstein knows a thing or two about presidential recordings, as his landmark reporting with Bob Woodward for the Washington Post led to President Richard Nixon resigning from office. However, he insists that the recordings of Trump are much more damning.

“It’s not déjà vu,” Bernstein said. “This is something far worse than Watergate. We have both a criminal president of the United States in Donald Trump, and a subversive president of the United States.”

“This is the ultimate smoking gun tape,” he continued. “It is the tape with the evidence of what this president is willing to do to undermine the electoral system and illegally, improperly and immorally try to instigate a coup.”

Bernstein believes the taped conversation is more than sufficient evidence to call for Trump’s immediate resignation. He urged all of the leaders in Washington, D.C., to come together and condemn this threat to democracy.

“In any other presidency,” said Bernstein, “this tape would be evidence enough to result in the impeachment of the president of the United States, his conviction in the senate of the United States, and really an immediate call by the members of congress, including of his own party, that he resign immediately.”

Fredricka Whitfield anchors the weekend edition of CNN Newsroom. For more information, please visit the CNN.com.

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