Nebraska Republican U-S Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska was highly critical of candidate Donald Trump throughout the 2016 campaign.
Sasse then supported President Trump so strongly over the next 3 years that Trump heartily endorsed him against a primary opponent who said Sasse didn’t back the president enough.
With Sasse now headed toward what appears to be a landslide victory, he’s returned to his criticism – at least according to an audio recording of a telephone town hall meeting the week obtained by the Washington Examiner.
When asked why he’d been so critical of a president of his own party, Sasse said he’s worked hard to “develop a good working relationship with the president over the last 3-½ years” and that he often prays for Trump and Vice President Mike Pence.
The senator then spent 8 full minutes of what’s being called “the harshest rebuke of the president by a sitting senator in his own Republican Party.” Sasse said Trump not only “fails to lead our allies (but) now regularly sells out our allies” while he “kisses dictators’ butts.”
Sasse went on to cite the way Trump treats women and “spends like a drunken sailor” like President Obama did. He also said the president mocks Christian evangelicals behind their backs, has “flirted with white supremacists” and, with his family “has treated the presidency like a business opportunity.”
Sasse had nothing good to say about Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, calling it a failure in leadership that hasn’t been reasonable, responsible or right with the president instead treating it like a “PR crisis rather than a multiyear public health challenge.
Sasse ended by telling his phone audience that it was his “duty” to “level with Nebraskans” about President Trump, even though he understands that some of them are “Trumpier” than he is, and he worried that the Republican Party becoming so identified with the president could lead to a GOP bloodbath in the Senate elections and drive the country further to the left.