U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill, D-Missouri, is not holding back during her final days in office. During an exit interview with CNN, she says her Republican colleagues are keeping their heads down instead of standing up to President Donald Trump “at some of the moments where he has been unhinged about particularly the rule of law.”
U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill conceeds to supporters at her re-election to Josh Hawley, the current Attorney General for the State of Missouri in St. Louis on November 6, 2018. McCaskill was the Democratic Senator for the State of Missouri for 12 years. Photo by Bill Greenblatt/UPI
“Now they’ll tell you, if it’s just the two of you, ‘The guy is nuts. He doesn’t have a grasp of the issues. He’s making rash decisions. He’s not listening to people who know the subject matter,'” she says. “But in public, if they go after him, they know they get a primary, and they know that’s tough. They watched what happened to their colleagues who did go after him. This is a completely different Republican party. I think history will judge some of my colleagues harshly that they didn’t stand up to this president.”
She declines to name Republicans who have called Trump “nuts”.
McCaskill acknowledges that the GOP has largely molded itself around Trump.
“This is Donald Trump’s Republican Party,” McCaskill says. “Make no mistake about it.”
She cites when the rapper Kanye West went on a profanity-laced rant in the Oval Office on live television.
“I mean, Kanye West was in the Oval Office M-F—ing on live TV,” McCaskill says. “I mean, think about that. That is crazy weird. Can you imagine what would have happened if that happened during the Obama years? The lid would have blown off this place. I think Fox News Channel would have gone up in some kind of spontaneous combustion, had that happened (during the Obama years). But it happens under Trump and it’s like, well, just another day at the office. So there is a numbing that’s gone on – that some of the craziest stuff that he says and does is not as noticeable because there’s so much of it.”
One argument being made to defend Trump is that his style has helped to get other parties to the negotiating table.
McCaskill was defeated in November’s general election by Republican Attorney General Josh Hawley. Trump heavily campaigned in support of Hawley.
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