The Washington Post‘s chief correspondent Dan Balz suggested it may become “necessary” for Republicans lawmakers to oppose President Donald Trump and act as a “check” on his executive power.
In the article published Tuesday, Balz warned that Republicans have arrived “at a moment of reckoning” following successive controversies dogging the Trump administration.
This after the Post on Monday published a news-making piece referencing “highly classified information” allegedly revealed by President Trump to Russian diplomats. It was followed up by a tweet from Washington Post Fact Checker columnist Glenn Kessler, who revealed there was “applause in the newsroom as the Russia-leak scoop breaks the Hollywood Access record for most readers per minute.”
In Balz’s seeming advocacy journalism piece, the Post correspondant wrote:
As President Trump has lurched from one crisis to another, Republicans have chosen a strategy of compartmentalization over confrontation, preferring to look away in hopes that the storm would pass. Now, after a pair of stunning revelations about the president, that approach may have run aground. For the GOP, this has become a moment of reckoning.
Balz referenced Trump’s firing of James B. Comey as FBI director and a subsequent New York Times report – denied by the White House – that Trump tried during a private meeting to convince Comey to drop an investigation into Michael Flynn, who was fired as national security adviser.
Balz also spotlighted the Post’s own report charging that Trump revealed “highly classified information” during a meeting with the Russian foreign minister and ambassador, according to “current and former U.S. officials.” The Post article acknowledged that, as president, “Trump has broad authority to declassify government secrets, making it unlikely that his disclosures broke the law.”
Balz then predicted that “increasingly, it will be difficult for Republicans to avoid recognizing the responsibility that comes with being the majority party in a separate branch of government, rather than seeing events primarily through the prism of a political alliance, no matter how awkward at times, between members of Congress and a president who won the November election as their nominee.”
Amid talk of impeachment in the news media, Balz seemingly called on congressional Republicans to provide a “check” against the executive branch:
As the controversies grow worse, so too will the tensions increase between the desire of congressional Republicans and the president to maintain a positive relationship and the responsibility of one branch of government to provide a check against another when that becomes necessary.
Balz wrote that, until the most recent controversies, Republicans estimated that a course of confrontation with Trump would be “counterproductive.”
He continued:
Calls for a special prosecutor or an independent investigation will intensify, though many Republicans will continue to resist, at least until their own political standing is in real danger. But the double revelations of the past two days show that events are forcing a change in everyone’s calculations.
Aaron Klein is Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio.” Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook.
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