Arizona Senator Jeff Flake, who announced he will not seek reelection to the U.S. Senate, delivered an intense rebuke of President Donald Trump on the Senate floor Tuesday.
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“There are times where we must risk our careers in favor of our principles,” Flake began. “Now is such a time.”
“It must also be said that I arise today with no small amount of regret,” he continued. “Regret because of the state of our disunion… Regret because of the coarseness of our leadership. Regret because of the compromise of our moral authority and by our–and I mean all of our–complicity in this alarming and dangerous state of affairs.”
Flake criticized the GOP for being complicit and accepting of the “unacceptable” and “undesirable” order under President Donald Trump, and urged them to reject the “new normal.” He then seemed to slam Trump for engaging in personal attacks, lying, and undermining the Democratic norms of the U.S. government.
“We must never regard as ‘normal’ the regular and casual undermining of our democratic norms and ideals. We must never meekly accept the daily sundering of our country – the personal attacks, the threats against principles, freedoms, and institutions, the flagrant disregard for truth or decency, the reckless provocations, most often for the pettiest and most personal reasons, reasons having nothing whatsoever to do with the fortunes of the people that we have all been elected to serve,” Flake said.
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“Reckless, outrageous, and undignified behavior has become excused and countenanced as ‘telling it like it is,’ when it is actually just reckless, outrageous, and undignified,” he continued about the president. “And when such behavior emanates from the top of our government, it is something else: It is dangerous to a democracy. Such behavior does not project strength – because our strength comes from our values. It instead projects a corruption of the spirit, and weakness.”
Flake quoted President Roosevelt to make the point that Republicans should value their principles above loyalty to the president, otherwise they would be acting in a “morally treasonable” manner.
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Trump’s anti-globalist tendencies came under attack during the speech as well, with Flake affirming the U.S.’s commitment to international institutions and to continuing America’s leadership throughout the world.
“The implications of this abandonment are profound. And the beneficiaries of this rather radical departure in the American approach to the world are the ideological enemies of our values,”he declared. “Despotism loves a vacuum. And our allies are now looking elsewhere for leadership. Why are they doing this? None of this is normal. And what do we as United States Senators have to say about it?”
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Flake ended the speech by announcing that he would not seek reelection to the Senate and asserting that he doesn’t believe there is room for him in the Republican Party any longer.
“It is clear at this moment that a traditional conservative who believes in limited government and free markets, who is devoted to free trade, and who is pro-immigration, has a narrower and narrower path to nomination in the Republican party – the party that for so long has defined itself by belief in those things,” he said.
The Senator affirmed that the American people are allowed to be angry and resentful, but said, “anger and resentment are not a governing philosophy.”
“This spell will eventually break. That is my belief. We will return to ourselves once more, and I say the sooner the better. Because to have a heathy government we must have healthy and functioning parties. We must respect each other again in an atmosphere of shared facts and shared values, comity and good faith.”