Republican senator blasts Trump presidency
‘None of this is normal’ veteran politician declares in extraordinary speech
WASHINGTON— A Republican stood on the Senate floor Tuesday and delivered a detailed indictment of just about everything about the Republican president.
Declaring that he must answer to his children and grandchildren, Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake said he could not “stay silent” about Donald Trump’s “reckless, outrageous and undignified behaviour” — or about his party colleagues’ “complicity” in supporting a president who is a threat to America’s values and future. “None of this is normal,” Flake said. “We must never meekly accept the daily sundering of our country. The personal attacks, the threats against principles, freedoms and institutions; the flagrant disregard for truth or decency, the reckless provocations, most often for the pettiest and most personal reasons, reasons having nothing whatsoever to do with the fortunes of the people that we have all been elected to serve.”
Trump’s “anger and resentment,” Flake said, “are not a governing philosophy.” Invoking Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan and cries of “fake news,” Flake said, “We were not made great as a country by indulging or even exalting our worst impulses, turning against ourselves, glorying in the things which divide us, and calling fake things true and true things fake.”
“Mr. President, I rise today to say: Enough,” Flake said.
It was an extraordinary moment, seemingly written for the history books, that might, under other circumstances, have suggested Trump was losing control of the party he took over.
But the day as a whole might have actually demonstrated that Trump’s grip is strengthening, not weakening. Flake gave his speech minutes after he effectively conceded defeat to Trump by announcing he would not be seeking re-election in 2018 — and, afterward, he received little support from fellow senators.
Flake, a seven-term House member in his first term in the Senate, is a traditional conservative who has boasted high scores from right-wing advocacy groups. But he had alienat- ed many of his own voters by criticizing Trump in a book he published earlier in the year. And he acknowledged that his pro-trade, pro-immigration stances, once standard in the party, put him out of step in the Trump era.
“There may not be a place for a Republican like me in the current Republican climate or the current Republican Party,” he told the Arizona Republic.
Flake’s poll numbers in Arizona had plummeted, and pro-Trump strategists like Steve Bannon had been plotting to defeat him. He acknowledged Tuesday it would have been hard to win his party primary.
“He had pissed off so many of the conservatives here,” said Laurence Schiff, a psychiatrist and self-described “Trump guy” who chairs the Republican committee in Arizona’s Mohave County. He said Flake was too supportive of illegal immigrants. Voters there, he said, want a hard line, including Trump’s giant wall on the Mexican border.
“I don’t think Jeff Flake is particularly conservative,” Schiff said. “I think that Flake had pissed off so many of the Republicans that an awful lot of people who weren’t going to vote for (Democratic candidate) Kyrsten Sinema were going to sit home.”
Republican members of Congress who do plan to run again have been reluctant to criticize Trump, even as they have been privately scathing, out of fear of alienating such voters. Just as they remained largely silent in response to former president George W. Bush’s criticism of Trump last week, they did not did not appear moved by Flake’s call to vocal action.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has avoided criticism of Trump, called Flake a “very fine man.” But neither McConnell nor other Republican leaders endorsed any of the substance of Flake’s remarks. Nor did they offer backup to the other retiring senator who castigated Trump hours earlier.
In a lengthy attack of his own, Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, lambasted Trump as “utterly untruthful” after the president tweeted a false claim about the senator’s role in Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran.
Trump, Corker said, is “debasing” the country and “obviously not going to rise to the occasion as president.”
House Speaker Paul Ryan brushed off Corker’s words as part of a mere Twitter feud. He urged people to focus on the Republicans’ legislative priority of the moment: tax reform.
“That’s what matters. So all this stuff you see on a daily basis on Twitter this and Twitter that, forget about it. Let’s focus on helping people.”
Flake’s decision to abandon the Senate leaves Trump to contend, for a year, with three Republican senators who strongly dislike him and no longer need his support. (The other Arizona senator, John McCain, has terminal brain cancer; Corker has also announced he will not run.) With a 52-member caucus, Trump can only afford to lose two party members on any given vote.