Last updated on October 21, 2020
Senator Ben Sasse (R-NE) is up for reelection this year, and by all accounts his seat is safe. Or at least it was until the Washington Examiner got hold of a tape of a conference call Sasse had with some constituents earlier this year:
Exclusive: GOP Sen. Sasse says Trump 'kisses dictators' butts' and mocks evangelicals
Republican Sen. Ben Sasse, in a private call with constituents, excoriated President Trump, saying he had mishandled the coronavirus response, “kisses dictators' butts,” “sells out our allies,” spends “like a drunken sailor,” mistreats women, and trash-talks evangelicals behind their backs.
Trump has “flirted with white supremacists,” according to Sasse, and his family “treated the presidency like a business opportunity.”
In what appears to be a conference call with his Nebraska constituents, Sasse said Trump could drive the Senate into the hand of the Democrats and cause permanent damage to the Republican Party. It is unclear when the call occurred, though it had to have happened well into this year because Sasse discusses Trump's handling of the coronavirus.
Notably, his spokesman, James Wegmann, didn’t deny the recording. The story has been picked by MSN and Politico so far.
Now, Sasse has been an occasional critic of Trump before:
Sasse Won’t Endorse Trump (Or Anyone Else) in 2020
even though Trump gave him an apparently unsolicited endorsement a year ago September:
“Ben has my Complete and Total Endorsement!” the president exclaimed Tuesday night on Twitter, lauding Mr. Sasse as “great with our Vets, the Military, and your very important Second Amendment,” and “Strong on Crime and the Border.” www.nytimes.com/…
Perhaps Trump may want to reconsider. Especially after this quote (from the Examiner story):
Sasse fretted that Trump and his “stupid political obsessions” could drive the country further to the Left. “If young people become permanent Democrats because they've just been repulsed by the obsessive nature of our politics, or if women who were willing to still vote with the Republican Party in 2016 decide that they need to turn away from this party permanently in the future,” Sasse said. “I've spent lots of the of the last year on a campaign bus, and when you listen to Nebraskans, they don't really want more rage tweeting as a new form of entertainment,” he said. “I think the overwhelming reason that President Trump won in 2016 was simply because Hillary Clinton was literally the most unpopular candidate in the history of polling.” [emphasis added]
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