Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brownclaimed in a new interview last night that his Republican colleagues in the Senate ha ve privately admitted that President Trump is “a racist” and “a misogynist.”
“Most Republican senators, when you talk to them individually, quietly, will acknowledge that Trump is a racist,” Brown said during a Monday interview on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.” “They’ll acknowledge that Trump is a misogynist. They’ll acknowledge he has trouble telling the truth.”
Brown, a popular Democrat in a battleground state reelected last November, is on about every Democratic presidential candidates short list for Vice President in 2020.
Brown also blasted Trump over the whistleblower complaint filed earlier this year accusing the president of withholding military aid to Ukraine in exchange for an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden.
Brown also targeted the Trump administration’s move last month to pull back troops from northern Syria, a choice critics said endangered Kurdish allies in the region.
“They know he doesn’t do his homework,” Brown continued. “They wonder about his relationship with [Russian President Vladimir] Putin because almost all of Trump’s foreign policy actions, frankly, are good for the Russians and not always good for us … including withholding aid to Ukraine, including pulling out the troops so that the Turks attack. That was good for Russia, it was good for ISIS, it was good for Iran, but it wasn’t good for the U.S., and it wasn’t good for Israel, clearly,” Brown said.
WATCH SHERROD BROWN ON THE LATE SHOW
But Brown added that he had not heard GOP senators discuss the impeachment inquiry House Democrats launched against Trump in September over the whistleblower complaint.
“I’ve not heard any talk about that because they know that one puts them in real trouble if they acknowledge that publicly,” Brown said.
“It’s pretty clear that Republican senators — I mean, they’re not going to go down as profiles in courage. It’s pretty clear that they like the tax cuts that Trump gave them. They like the attacks on the environment and on labor rights, and they like the young right-wing judges. And they’re all scared of their base. They’re all scared of a Republican primary from a Trump supporter that could take them out,” he continued. The Democratic lawmaker called GOP senators’ support of Trump his “biggest disappointment” during his time in the Senate.
Brown, who served in the House from 1993 to 2007, added that if he were still a representative, he would support Trump’s impeachment. He did not support the impeachment of former President Clinton at the time.
“The difference is that [Trump] did things that even [former President] Nixon never did,” Brown said.
“This current president asked for help from a foreign government to help himself, to help his own election,” Brown said. “That’s clearly an impeachable offense.”