'Cold Civil War': Carl Bernstein offers chilling preview of the stakes in Trump impeachment hearings

Legendary reporter Carl Bernstein on Tuesday delivered a chilling warning about the state of American politics ahead of President Donald Trump's impeachment hearings.

During a CNN appearance, Bernstein was asked where the country stood just one day before the start of public impeachment hearings -- and he didn't mince words.

"Where we stand as a country in the middle of a cold civil war," he said. "Everything is going to be judged politically in the context of that cold civil war."

Bernstein then laid out how much damning evidence that Democrats have collected so far, which he said in another era would likely lead to the president's conviction in the Senate. Now, however, he said that all the evidence in the world might not be enough to end Trump's presidency.

"We don't know where this is going to go because a lot of it is going to have to do with how the American people process this information, and particularly on Capitol Hill," he said.

Nonetheless, Bernstein said that public testimony combined with preexisting concerns about the president's actions and temperament among some Republican senators could create a "tipping point" that would leave Trump badly damaged, even if he survived conviction.

Watch the video below.