Watergate reporter hits out at Trump officials for not speaking sooner about ‘Hitlerian’ administration

Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein was furious during a recent cable news appearance after reading an upcoming book in which members of Donald Trump's inner circle said he acted like a fascist.

Mr Bernstein appeared on CNN on Tuesday, where he discussed a passage from Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker's upcoming book "I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J Trump's Catastrophic Final Year."

In the book, the authors paint a dramatic portrait of General Mark Milley, who allegedly spent the months in the aftermath of the 2020 election trying to ensure Mr Trump could not carry out a coup to stay in office.

According to the book - which complies interviews with at least 140 individuals including Trump administration officials - General Milley frequently compared Mr Trump to Hitler and his supporters as "the same guys we fought in World War II."

Mr Bernstein was incensed that people with the knowledge of what was happening inside the administration did not come forward sooner as whistleblowers.

"And yet his party — the people around him in the White House — they did not go public, including some of the people who are quoted in these books. Why the hell did they sit still instead of warning the American people out loud, instead of just talking to us? We have a lot of questions to answer as we know in an expanded way finally what has occurred in this terrible, terrible, awful period of our history," Mr Bernstein said.

In the upcoming book, General Milley reportedly felt that Mr Trump's claims of election fraud were the foundation for en eventual attempt to seize power as a dictator.

“This is a Reichstag moment,” General Milley told his aides, according to the book. “The gospel of the Führer.”

The book claims that General Milley spent the final months of Mr Trump's presidency assuring lawmakers and other concerned parties that checks were in place to stop Mr Trump from trying to seize power.

One of those lawmakers, House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi, reportedly called General Milley in the aftermath of the 6 January insurrection to ensure Mr Trump could not unilaterally launch a nuclear warhead and start a war, allowing him to claim emergency powers and stay in office.

“This guy’s crazy,” Ms Pelosi said of Trump, according to the book. “He’s dangerous. He’s a maniac.”

General Milley assured her that there were "checks and balances in the system."

Mr Trump, responding to the allegations in the book, said he never considered enacting a coup to stay in power, but said if he did it would not have involved the general.

“I never threatened, or spoke about, to anyone, a coup of our Government,” Mr Trump said. “If I was going to do a coup, one of the last people I would want to do it with is General Mark Milley.”

After reading the excerpts from the book, Mr Bernstein questioned how US politics could allow for someone who could be described as "Hitlerian" to run the country.

"We need to take this moment and say, how did we get to a place where the leader of the American military compared the president of the United States to Hitlerian fascism?" Mr Bernstein said. "We didn't say it. He did. This is a moment. That is that's the importance of this book and perhaps the importance of some of the other books. We are finally getting behind the scenes as to what our leaders were saying and knew about Trump."