Hindsight is always 20/20. Senator Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press this morning, and he continued with his recent campaign of distancing himself from President Donald Trump. Fresh off the release of his book, Conscience of a Conservative: A Rejection of Destructive Policies and a Return to Principle, Flake told host Chuck Todd that the Republican Party has engaged in a few horrible ideas, including the birther movement (which President Trump was a vocal proponent of) and the “Lock her up!” chants of the 2016 election campaign.
Flake told Todd:
“I wish that we, as a party, would have stood up, for example, when the ‘birtherism thing’ was going on – a lot of people did stand up, but not enough. That was particularly ugly.”
Todd asks Flake if he feels he, personally, did enough to combat birtherism. Flake claims he did, then moves forward:
“I mean, when our party, during rallies, when the chants ‘Lock her up!’ You know, we shouldn’t be the party for jailing your political opponents. And anybody at that rally, anybody at those rallies, ought to stand up and say ‘That’s inappropriate; we shouldn’t be doing that.’ And I wish we as a party and elected officials would do more of that.”
Although a prominent Republican Senator moving against Trump might seem like a godsend, there may be an ulterior motive. A recent poll of Arizona voters puts Flake’s disapproval percentage at 62 percent. Only 18 percent of Arizona voters said they approve of the job Flake is doing.
Essentially, don’t read too much into it. After all, Flake is responsible for a recent bill to allow telecom giants to sell your personal data without telling you, so he is pretty much cut from the GOP cloth. He also publicly defended Trump as recently as April. On the other hand, it often only takes one pulled thread to unravel the entire sweater.
You can watch Flake’s regrets with Chuck Todd below.
Sen. @jeffflake (R-Ariz.) tells @chucktodd in an exclusive interview, "I wish we as a party had stood up" to the birther movement. #MTP pic.twitter.com/LfIABvICFj
— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) August 6, 2017
Featured image via Twitter video from Meet the Press.
