White House Chief of Staff John Kelly should not only resign his post but testify before Congress about President Donald Trump's behavior in office and the reported dysfunction within his administration, investigative journalist Carl Bernstein said on Tuesday.
Bernstein was speaking to CNN about the damning revelations in colleague Bob Woodward's new book, Fear: Trump in the White House, which includes reports of aides intentionally keeping documents from Trump to keep the president from signing orders that could endanger national security.
Woodward quoted Kelly as calling the president an "idiot" and saying that his current post was the "worst job" of his life.
"It would seem to me that General Kelly, in the interest of the country, needs to resign and with a statement that says, 'The presidency can no longer be entrusted to this man,'" Bernstein said.
Bernstein explained what else Kelly should include in his resignation letter.
"'We now have a picture of what we've all been dealing with here,'" Bernstein gave as an example of what Kelly should write. "'I will be happy to appear before committees of Congress...and tell them what I have seen about this president of the United States and whether or not he is competent and able to lead the United States.'"
The new book, which will be released on September 11, also includes damaging quotes by Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis. Both Kelly and Mattis issued statements Tuesday denying their quotes in the book, including Mattis saying that Trump "acted like—and had the understanding of—a fifth or sixth-grader."
Trump and the White House also pushed back strongly against the book, with the president accusing Woodward of using anonymous sources and making up quotes.
Trump took to Twitter Wednesday morning to call Woodward's book "a picture of a person that is literally the exact opposite of the fact."
Isn’t it a shame that someone can write an article or book, totally make up stories and form a picture of a person that is literally the exact opposite of the fact, and get away with it without retribution or cost. Don’t know why Washington politicians don’t change libel laws?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 5, 2018
Bernstein defended Woodward's reporting and noted that the man he paired with to investigate Watergate, which brought down President Richard Nixon in the early 1970s, had lots of recordings to back up his book's claims.
"There are so many tape recordings from his sources that the account, the narrative accounts, are based on. We finally are inside the Trump White House, and it is a horror show," Bernstein said.
Kelly and Trump's relationship had been described as poor, or outright contentious, well before Woodward's book made national headlines. And many reports have indicated the president was either thinking of dismissing Kelly or that Kelly would resign.
Woodward's book seems to back up other tomes, including Michael Wolff's Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, and former White House adviser Omarosa Manigault Newman's Unhinged: An Insider's Account of the Trump White House. Each book included reports of aides questioning Trump's fitness for office.
