In the wake of President Trump’s well-received Fourth of July celebration and Sunday’s new ABC News/Washington Post poll showing his approval surging to record highs, CNN political analyst Carl Bernstein decried the President and his supporters for allegedly pushing the country towards a civil war.

Bernstein, a master of hyperbole that NewsBusters reporting can attest to, appeared on Sunday’s so-called “Reliable Sources” where he, in all seriousness, suggested that “this cold civil war predates Donald Trump. And Donald Trump understood that we are in a cold civil war in this country. And he has exploited it and brought this cold civil war almost to the point of ignition through his actions and his words, which are unprecedented in terms of presidential conduct.”

“No president in the history of the United States in 246 years has expressed the kinds of ideas and thoughts and undemocratic notions and authoritarian notions that he has,” he continued to proclaim, a total falsehood (Presidents Woodrow Wilson (D) and FDR (D) come to mind).

Immediately following that false accusation, Bernstein turned to attacking President Trump’s supporters around the country. “We need to start connecting these dots. What do people in the country think of this and why do they think and support him, no matter what he does, no matter how outrageous seemingly his conduct is,” he decried, as if those people supported Trump’s supposed “authoritarian notions”.

That wasn’t the first time in the segment Bernstein targeted Trump’s supporters. Moments earlier, he lashed out the findings of the ABC News/Washington Post poll and asserted they were “a reflection of that cold civil war and how appealing [Trump’s] message has been to almost half the people in this country.”

He then argued that the press needed to do more to cover what those people were really saying and thinking that they would go along with Trump:

And we are not making in the press the connections between what's going on in the country and Donald Trump, the president. We need to be covering the country as well and what people are talking about, thinking about, saying at the dinner table and connecting them to what is going on in Washington and in this campaign.

“Do you think that relates to the Fourth of July celebrations in Washington and President Trump giving a speech, a well-received speech about patriotism and the strength of the country, but even before and afterwards it was very polarized,” host and media janitor Brian Stelter wondered to Bernstein in response.

Stelter essentially admitted that CNN hated Trump’s Salute to America when he pointed out that “the arguments about it were very polarized. If you love Trump, then you loved the speech. If you don't love Trump, all you're talking about is the airports and how he made mistakes during the speech.” He and his guests discussed that latter point just minutes beforehand.

This kind of bashing of Trump’s base and middle America was just the kind of coastal elitist mentality had helped Trump get elected in the first place. This is CNN.

The transcript is below, click "expand" to read: