Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus has had just about enough of these Republican lawmakers saying that they just can’t get behind the party’s presumptive presidential nominee, Donald Trump, and he cut loose on the topic in a Thursday morning interview with conservative radio host Mike Gallagher.
Arguing that voting against Trump -- or even just failing to vote for him -- clears the way for presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton to select Supreme Court Justices, Priebus said: “They’re not just screwing around with the next four years. Some of these folks are screwing around with the next 40 years.” (The section of the interview pertaining to the anti-Trump element of the GOP begins near the 8-minute mark.)
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“So if you actually believe in this stuff and you actually want to have a conservative Supreme Court, and you think it matters, and you want someone to actually sign a budget bill that balances the thing hopefully within the next ten years for God sakes, then you’re gonna need a Republican in the White House. Otherwise we’re just wasting everyone’s time and money.”
And the normally mild-mannered Priebus wasn’t done.
“Okay, so you win the Senate, you keep the House and now we just say well, some of these folks, ‘I don’t know if I’m on board yet.’ Well, then what are you doing? You’re just wasting your time. You’re wasting everybody’s money. You’re wasting your breath.
“This is it,” he said urgently. “We have the House. We have the Senate, we need to win the White House, this is our chance to actually govern in this town and change things for the better. And for some people to take a pass, it is unfathomable why people would have that attitude.”
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Except that, well, it isn’t exactly unfathomable. In fact, it’s pretty clear why some Republicans are reluctant to jump on the Trump Train, and the candidate proved it yet again this morning.
At almost the same time Priebus was speaking to Gallagher, The Washington Post reports that Trump was on Capitol Hill insulting some of the same lawmakers who say they can’t back him and reminding others of his extraordinarily limited knowledge of U.S. public policy and politics. In a meeting with GOP senators, he called one of them “a loser” and told another that he would lose his election in November even though the lawmaker in question isn’t even on the ballot.
Also on Thursday, in a meeting with House Republicans, Trump was reportedly asked what he would do to protect Congressional authority under Article I of the Constitution, Trump promised to defend all the articles, up to and including Article XII.
There are only seven articles of the constitution.
