Bob Woodward calls on Congress to rein in Trump: 'We now have a constitutional problem'

Veteran journalist Bob Woodward said on Wednesday that Donald Trump “cannot stabilize the electoral process” and is in fact making it unstable through his rhetoric and actions, including his performance in the first presidential debate.

Woodward called on Congress to “step up” and solve what he described as a “constitutional problem.”

“It’s reached a boiling point,” Woodward said. “I mean we are teetering here. The Congress needs to step up.”

During the debate on Tuesday night, Trump continued his baseless attacks on mail-in voting, repeating several debunked allegations questioning the integrity of the voting process.

Trump’s belligerent performance in the debate prompted admonitions from moderator Chris Wallace and Vice President Joe Biden, who bluntly told Trump to “shut up, man.”

The Commission on Presidential Debates has since announced that it is planning to add “additional structure” to the debate “to ensure a more orderly discussion of the issues.”

From the Sept. 30 edition of CNN’s “The Situation Room”:

WOLF BLITZER, CNN: You’ve covered presidential debates for decades, going back to the Nixon presidential debates. Have you ever seen any debate, anything like we saw last night?

 

BOB WOODWARD: Nothing — it’s extraordinary. But people are talking, Wolf, about the debate commission and — you know, this – the debate commission is not in the Constitution.

 

We now have a constitutional problem. The executive branch is the president, he clearly cannot stabilize the electoral process, in fact, he’s stoking, yes — let’s make it unstable. The Supreme Court really has no power at this moment. But the Congress does. And it seems to me, it’s reached a boiling point. I mean, we are teetering here. And the Congress needs to step up, maybe [Senate Majority Leader Mitch] McConnell and [Senate Minority Leader Chuck] Schumer from the Senate, [Speaker Nancy] Pelosi and [House Minority Leader Kevin] McCarthy from the House getting together – I mean, they can’t get together on a COVID relief bill – but this now is important and they need to sit down and say what — The ball is in their court, they have to do something to stabilize this. Maybe they could come up with a bipartisan agreement on constitutional and electoral stability and actually say, “This is what we need to do, this is what we need to do to get the candidates to pledge.”

 

They — listen, with all this talk and all of the uncertainty we are heading right into, they’ve got to find some way to get this calmed down.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.