Story highlights Veteran journalist Carl Bernstein warns against Trump's approach to the media

Bernstein: "He doesn't go to a fact-based argument. He goes to an emotional argument"

(CNN) CNN political commentator Carl Bernstein slammed Donald Trump Sunday, saying that the President-elect "lives and thrives in a fact-free environment."

After CNN's Brian Stelter brought up Trump's frequent tweets expressing disdain for news coverage of his affairs , Bernstein warned against allowing the incoming president to define the agenda.

"No president, including Richard Nixon, has been so ignorant of fact and disdains fact in the way this President-elect does," said Bernstein, whose reporting in the 1970s with Bob Woodward for the Washington Post exposed the Watergate scandal and led to Nixon's resignation.

"And it has something to do with the growing sense of authoritarianism he and his presidency are projecting," Bernstein added. "The danger of it is obvious and he's trying to make the conduct of the press the issue, not his own conduct."

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Bernstein brought up Trump's Twitter response to Chuck Jones , the Indiana union leader who, in an interview with CNN's Erin Burnett, talked about his disappointment with Trump's Carrier deal . Within minutes of the interview airing, Trump responded on Twitter, saying that Jones had "done a terrible job representing workers," an approach that Bernstein called "bullying."

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