(NewsNation) — There should be a fundamental fairness in how we hold our politicians accountable, NewsNation’s Leland Vittert said on “Morning in America.”
Vittert was discussing his interview with veteran journalist Bob Woodward, who recently released tapes of his interviews with former President Donald Trump.
“There’s a lot of voters who are saying, How can you lecture me about how divided America is and how terrible President Trump is? If President Biden is doing exactly the same thing, a mirror image on the other side?” Vittert said.
America’s political divide has been deepening, with members of both parties considering those on the opposite side of the political spectrum “immoral.”
Voters on both sides of the aisle also think their opponents could destroy democracy in the U.S.
This divide has been driven by misinformation and conspiracy theories that circulate on social media and are increasingly spread by politicians.
A number of Republicans, such as Arizona’s Kari Lake, are running on a platform centered around Trump’s false claims of widespread election fraud.
As the midterm elections near, negative rhetoric has increased.
Trump continues to push his claims of election fraud, despite their being shot down repeatedly in court and there being no evidence to support them. His supporters have mobilized across the country and legal challenges around election rules have already begun.
For his part, President Joe Biden has ramped up criticism of Republicans. He’s called MAGA Republicans a threat to democracy and referred to GOP ideology as “semi-fascism.”
Vittert noted that Woodward has been extremely critical of Trump, and that one of the reasons he published his interviews was that he didn’t believe he had been hard enough on the former president in his books.
But when it comes to fairness, Vittert said political polarization is continuing under President Biden.
“(He) had to admit, basically, that President Biden is doing the very same thing that he has been so critical of President Trump for doing, and that that goes to this sort of fundamental fairness idea of how accountable we hold our politicians, that if one is doing something that we don’t like, or we find divisive, then we have to apply that same standard to the other one,” Vittert said.
Watch the full interview in the player above.