Conservative Rips ‘Senatorial Candidate Clown Car That Donald Trump Has Wrought’ for the GOP
Never-Trump conservative Charlie Sykes is not impressed with the slate of Republican Senate candidates who rode endorsements from the former president to primary victories.
GOP operatives remain concerned about the viability of candidates such as Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania and Herschel Walker in Georgia. Even J.D. Vance in Ohio has found himself in a tight race.
“This is part of this erosion of the gap between entertainment and celebrity and politics,”Sykes said on Tuesday’s Deadline: White House. “No longer are we interested, apparently – or the Republican Party under Donald Trump – interested in getting experienced politicians or people who are–have intelligent ideas about public policy. You have NFL stars. You have people who have been flogging supplements on television.”
Sykes seemed especially aghast at Walker, who has made a number of gaffes while campaigning.
“I mean, the reality is that Herschel Walker – and I’m not trying to be unkind to him – he has no business running for the United States Senate,” Sykes continued. “He has no business running for public office. You would think that people who loved him and cared about him would keep him from the kind of exposure that he’s getting right now, a man manifestly unfit for public office.”
He added that Oz is “clearly not ready for primetime” despite Trump’s seal of approval.
“This is what Donald Trump has done,” Sykes added. “He’s not only made it more reckless and more extreme and more radical and more dishonest, he’s also just made it dumber. He’s made it more trivial.”
He stated that the GOP’s hope of taking back the upper chamber rests on “the senatorial candidate clown car that Donald Trump has wrought for his party.”
Host Nicolle Wallace noted to guest Eddie Glaude that while Trump endorsed the candidates, the voters nonetheless elected them.
“These people won primaries,” she said. “The rot and the appetite for the idiocy feels like the root problem that we have to deal with.”
“I think that’s absolutely right,” Glaude replied. “And so, there’s a complete disregard for the voter on one level in terms of putting forward incompetent people. But there’s also a desire to throw the voter – the base, at least – the red meat. And so you have these people who are willing to, in some ways, appeal to the base instincts of the electorate.”
Sykes agreed.
“I think this is an important point,” he said. “Look, there’s a leadership problem in the Republican Party, but there’s also a base problem, because ultimately, voters in these states had a choice, and this is what they want. Donald Trump has sort of a visceral understanding of this.”
Watch above via MSNBC.
