'Not my America': Veteran conservative says GOP '100 times' worse than Nixon’s party

Longtime conservative pundit Bill Kristol says he barely recognizes the Republican Party that helped shut down Richard Nixon’s Watergate wrongdoing in 1974 after roughly a decade under the corrupting influence of President Donald Trump.

“Ten years of Trump as president … has made a huge difference,” Kristol told Bulwark publisher Sarah Longwell. “Even though 50 percent of the Republican electorate was still for Nixon the Republican elites turned against Nixon.”

“[Barry] Goldwater, famously, [Republican Senate leader] Hugh Scott went to the White House. The leading conservative columnists and thinkers in America ... Even the [conservative] National Review, by the end of it, was basically for him leaving office. And incidentally Watergate was 1/100^th of the stuff that's happening now.,” Kristol said. “ … Congress was run by Democrats, so it was different. But the Republicans ended up splitting and at least enough of them deserted. Nothing like that's happened with [Trump’s] corruption and seizing of power and lawlessness that's 100 times what Nixon did.”

Kristol said he was amazed the party was still largely sticking with Trump, despite what critics are describing as the Trump’s family’s crypto schemes and the likelihood of Trump selling presidential pardons in exchange for money and favors.

“You're not getting any signals that … [you’re normally] getting from decent Republicans [that] things are going too far, or maybe ‘we really don’t like the shooting of Alex Pretti or Renee Goode in Minneapolis,’” Kristol pointed out. “And they're not getting the kind of Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, H.W. Bush rhetoric from anyone anymore. And … I think that's done a lot of damage.”

Kristol added that public support of Trump and his party is eroding to the point where primarily only the radical 30 percent appear to remain with “Trumpism.” He also said he did not recognize the insane animosity the party felt for birthright citizenship, which has been a part of American life longer than any Republican has been alive. Kristol called this particular brand of nativism outright ‘bigotry.’

“I've become convinced that the immigration stuff, the mass deportation stuff, the birthright citizenship [stuff], it's not just about the immigrants,” said Kristol. “… They are fighting hard for their version of America, and it's not my America.”