Thursday on MSNBC’s “Deadline: White House,” Weekly Standard co-founder and political commentator Bill Kristol said President Donald Trump’s fight for the funding of a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border was causing “serious conservative Trump-supporting” members of the U.S. Senate to he “is totally out of control.”
Kristol said, “It’s a terrible miscalculation for this reason: what does he really need to stop impeachment? He needs senators. Last night, the Senate, by unanimous consent, voice voted this bill. Mitch McConnell, Jim Inhofe, Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz, conservative senators went along because the signal from the White House was we’re not going to fight this now but kick it down the road until February 8. I think if you are a serious conservative Trump-supporting senator right now, you think this guy is totally out of control. He’s responding to three people on Twitter and two talk radio hosts and two random Republican congressmen? We just took a vote that might hurt us a little bit. We did it. They didn’t take a roll call vote, by unanimous consent. And I just think the degree to which—he might pick up a little with some of the people listening to Rush Limbaugh out there—among actual people in Washington who follow this who have been disposed to at least give him the benefit of the doubt, people we’ve criticized all these months and years for giving him so much benefit of the doubt. This is a moment of, ‘Are you kidding me? I just voted for this last night, and you’re pulling the rug out from under me?'”
Politics editor at The Daily Beast Sam Stein said, “I could not think of a more asinine legislative strategy than what Donald Trump has done here.”
He added, “A lot of actual Republican lawmakers will be like, ‘This is a little crazy, maybe we should rethink this.’”
Kristol added, “It reminds these senators they aren’t dealing with someone who is getting more rational, who’s getting easier to work with, who is watching out a little bit for them occasionally. It’s just the opposite.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.