Bob Woodward Says Trump Is “Putting a Dagger in the Constitution”

Veteran journalist Bob Woodward has continued to speak out against Donald Trump since conducting interviews with the President for his most recent book, Rage.

Woodward spoke to MSNBC’s Deadline: White House on Thursday about Trump’s refusal to commit to a peaceful transition of power if he loses in November.

He said Trump was potentially “putting a dagger in the Constitution.”

“We have a president who has forsaken his basic duty to protect the country, to tell the truth and organize and plan, have some theory of the case what is he going to do as president,” Woodward said.

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“Time and time again we know, and I’ve got more endless examples of this, of him making decisions on impulse, tweeting, driving people crazy who work for him and then they leave or he fires them by tweet and he says the cruelest things.”

“I think the President in all of the things he’s doing here has forsaken a larger duty which is a moral duty to do what’s best for the country,” he went on.

“This is a moral failure and a leadership failure. This idea about the election he’s predicting and almost wishing for a quadruple train wreck on November 3.”

Woodward was a key figure, along with Carl Bernstein, in unveiling the Watergate scandal that eventually brought down President Richard Nixon. He’s largely remained impartial in the decades since but has broken with his own precedent following his interviews with Trump.

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Darragh Roche

Darragh Roche is a journalist covering U.S. politics and media