The different ways some GOP senators talk about President Donald Trump in private and then in public was highlighted by the famed Watergate journalist Bob Woodward and CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Thursday’s broadcast of “The Situation Room.”
Woodward — whose new book “Rage” revealed how Trump intentionally misled the public about the coronavirus threat while privately knowing the danger ― warned that the “world of private truth and public untruth” among Republican lawmakers was “very dangerous” for the United States.
Audio surfaced this week of Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) in a call with constituents slamming Trump’s mishandling of the pandemic and flirtations with white supremacists. Sasse, who has publicly backed Trump on most issues, said the president’s values are “deficient, not just for a Republican, but for an American.”
Woodward said Sasse “got caught telling the truth.” He said he knows “other Republican senators who feel exactly the same way,” but “have not yet been caught and more catastrophically they won’t share with the public the private conclusion they have.”
Blitzer added that he’s heard “from a whole bunch of Republicans who are refusing to go public in saying things like this, privately they will say these things but they’re afraid of the president, they don’t want to say anything like this publicly.”
“Step back on this and the horror of it that we have the world of private truth and public untruth,” said Woodward. “The job of public officials is to find some way to get the private into the mainstream. It really is almost a crime against every voter in this country to not somehow break down that barrier.”
Check out the interview here: