Carl Bernstein named 21 GOP senators who he said are enabling Trump's attempts to subvert US democracy by criticizing him only in private

• Carl Bernstein, one of the journalists who uncovered the Watergate scandal in the 1970s, said on Sunday that 21 Republican senators had privately "expressed extreme contempt" for President Donald Trump and "his fitness to be POTUS."
• He said their silence had "helped enable Trump's most grievous conduct—including undermining and discrediting the US the electoral system."
• Some of the senators he named have acknowledged Joe Biden's presidential win. Bernstein told CNN that he'd known about some of the senators' feelings for the past two or three years.

The legendary reporter Carl Bernstein on Sunday tweeted what he said was a list of 21 Republican senators who have privately expressed "extreme contempt" for President Donald Trump but won't express it publicly.

Bernstein, who reported on the Watergate scandal that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon in the 1970s, said the senators had "repeatedly expressed extreme contempt for Trump & his fitness to be POTUS" in conversations with colleagues, staff members, lobbyists, and White House aides.

Bernstein said that by not speaking publicly, these senators were allowing Trump to undermine the US voting system as he refuses to concede the election and baselessly claims he lost because of widespread voter fraud.

—Carl Bernstein (@carlbernstein) November 23, 2020

"With few exceptions, their craven public silence has helped enable Trump's most grievous conduct—including undermining and discrediting the US the electoral system," Bernstein said.

The senators he named are:

• Rob Portman (Ohio)
• Lamar Alexander (Tennessee)
• Ben Sasse (Nebraska)
• Roy Blunt (Missouri)
• Susan Collins (Maine)
• Lisa Murkowski (Alaska)
• John Cornyn (Texas)
• John Thune (South Dakota)
• Mitt Romney (Utah)
• Mike Braun (Indiana)
• Todd Young (Indiana)
• Tim Scott (South Carolina)
• Rick Scott (Florida)
• Marco Rubio (Florida)
• Chuck Grassley (Iowa)
• Richard Burr (North Carolina)
• Pat Toomey (Pennsylvania)
• Martha McSally (Arizona)
• Jerry Moran (Kansas)
• Pat Roberts (Kansas)
• Richard Shelby (Alabama)

These 21 senators make up almost 40% of the 53 Republicans in the Senate.

Despite Trump's protests, some Republican senators — including five that Bernstein listed: Romney, Rubio, Murkowski, Toomey, and Collins — have acknowledged that Joe Biden is the president-elect.

Romney, who has previously been critical of Trump, recently said in a blistering statement about Trump's response to the election results that "it's difficult to imagine a worse, more undemocratic action by a sitting American President."

Bernstein told CNN that he'd known about some of these senators' feelings for the past two or three years. "Many, if not most, of these individuals, from what I have been told, were happy to see Donald Trump defeated in this election as long as the Senate could be controlled by the Republicans," he said.

He added that more Republicans needed to speak out against Trump. "We are witnessing the mad king in the final days of his reign, 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 in our institutions and the Constitution for Donald Trump's own petulant, selfish, rabid ends," he said.

"We have a president of the United States, for the first time in our history, sabotaging his country."

You can watch him speaking here: