Bernstein said on CNN Thursday that the president’s move represents “a coup ... against the administration of justice and the rule of law in the United States.”

The “purpose” of Whitaker’s appointment is to “undermine” the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller, to “bury it, to manipulate it,” Bernstein added.

The journalist who helped expose the Watergate scandal that led to Richard Nixon’s resignation spoke as thousands of people poured into the streets in cities across the nation to protest Sessions’ forced resignation Wednesday. Whitaker, the new acting attorney general, has criticized Mueller’s probe of Russian interference in the 2016 campaign and once argued that any president could shut down any investigation without being guilty of obstructing justice.

“What we need to be concerned about is a rage-aholic president that we saw [Wednesday], out of control, who has no understanding of the importance and primacy of the rule of law in our system,” Bernstein said.

“Our system of government” could be “obliterated” by Trump, warned the journalist and author.

“If he is as innocent of all of these things, as he maintains,” of any collusion with Russia, Trump should “welcome this investigation,” Bernstein said.

“We are watching a president, whose back is to the wall, trying to earn himself a get-out-of-jail pass ... by manipulating the system of justice in the United States in a way that goes far farther than Nixon did in Watergate,” he added.

He said that “good Republicans understood the violence done to the Constitution and to our country” in the Watergate scandal — and stood up to Nixon.

Check out Bernstein’s comments in the clip above.