Senator Ben Sasse (R-NE) has become the latest senior Republican to criticize President Donald Trump ahead of the presidential election on November 3. The president is currently trailing former Vice President Joe Biden in the polls.
In a telephone town hall on Wednesday, Sasse told constituents that a Trump loss “looks likely” and called him a “a TV-obsessed, narcissistic individual,” according to a recording obtained by the Washington Examiner, which the New York Times says it has authenticated.
“We are staring down the barrel of a blue tsunami,” Sasse said, warning that the country could see a “Venezuela style” Supreme Court – suggesting Democrats will pack the court if they win in a landslide.
“The way he kisses dictators’ butts,” Sasse said. “I mean, the way he ignores that the Uighurs are in literal concentration camps in Xinjiang right now. He hasn’t lifted a finger on behalf of the Hong-Kongers.”
“The United States now regularly sells out our allies under his leadership, the way he treats women, spends like a drunken sailor,” he said.
With just 18 days before the presidential election, a significant number of prominent Republicans have distanced themselves from the president, including those still in office.
On October 14, Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker said he would not be supporting Trump in November. Baker had previously revealed he hadn’t voted for Trump in 2016 or in his state’s Republican primary.
“The governor cannot support Donald Trump for president and is focused on seeing Massachusetts through the pandemic,” Baker’s communications director Lizzy Guyton told a CNN affiliate. “He’ll leave the election analysis to the pundits.”
Baker was one of four GOP governors who refused to sign a letter supporting the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett. The others were Larry Hogan of Maryland, Phil Scott of Vermont and Chris Sununu of New Hampshire.
Senator Mitt Romney of Utah criticized Trump’s rhetoric in a statement on October 13. Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential candidate, also highlighted some of the Democrats’ behavior.
“The President calls the Democratic vice presidential candidate ‘a monster;’ he repeatedly labels the speaker of the House ‘crazy;’ he calls for the Justice Department to put the prior president in jail; he attacks the governor of Michigan on the very day a plot is discovered to kidnap her,” Romney said.
“The consequence of the crescendo of anger leads to a very bad place. No sane person can want that,” Romney went on.
Though Sasse, Romney and Baker are the most recent senior Republicans to speak out, there has been growing criticism of the president throughout the presidential campaign.
On June 8 former Republican Secretary of State Colin Powell said Trump had “drifted away” from the Constitution and later publicly backed Biden for president. He did note vote for Trump in 2016.
Maryland’s Larry Hogan has been particularly critical of the president’s handling of COVID-19, writing of Trump in the Washington Post on July 16 that “instead of listening to his own public health experts, the president was talking and tweeting like a man more concerned about boosting the stock market or his re-election'”
John Kasich, a Republican and former governor of Ohio, spoke at the Democratic National Convention on August 17 and endorsed Biden, while Cindy McCain, wife of the late Senator John McCain, backed Biden because “he’s the better man.”
Former Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona said on August 24 that Trump is “not a conservative” and called him a “chaos president.” He has also been a critic of the president in the past.
“I was a Republican long before the President ever called himself one. And I’ll be a Republican long after identifying as such is no longer useful to him,” Flake said.