(The Guardian) Hogan: Trump the '800lb gorilla'
Republicans have been bashing Donald Trump on the Sunday talk shows, with Maryland governor Larry Hogan calling him the “800lb gorilla” as the former president prepares to announce a new White House run this week.
The party’s less than stellar midterms performance, which included a slew of defeats for extremist candidates endorsed by Trump, have prompted growing chorus from senior officials that it’s “time to move on” from him.
Leading the call Sunday was Hogan, for so long one of very few Republicans daring to speak out against the twice-impeached former president. Hogan, who is termed out of office in January, told CNN’s State of the Union it would be “a mistake” for Trump to run again, noting that the White House, Senate and House were all lost under his watch: He’s still the 800 pound gorilla. It’s still a battle that’s going to continue for the next few years. We’re two years out from the next election. And the dust is settling from this one. I think it’d be a mistake. Trump’s cost us the last three elections and I don’t want to see it happen a fourth time.
Over on NBC’s Meet the Press, Louisiana senator Bill Cassidy also laid Republicans’ poor showing at Trump’s door, alluding to his fixation with his 2020 defeat by Joe Biden, and candidates who bought into the lie that the election was stolen from him: Those that were most closely aligned with the past, those are the ones that underperformed.
We’re not a cult. We’re not like, ‘OK, there’s one person who leads our party’. If we have a sitting president, she or he will be the leader of our party, but we should be a party of ideas and principles. And that’s what should lead us. What we’ve been lacking, perhaps, is that fulsome discussion.
Republicans have been bashing Donald Trump on the Sunday talk shows, with Maryland governor Larry Hogan calling him the “800lb gorilla” as the former president prepares to announce a new White House run this week.
The party’s less than stellar midterms performance, which included a slew of defeats for extremist candidates endorsed by Trump, have prompted growing chorus from senior officials that it’s “time to move on” from him.
Leading the call Sunday was Hogan, for so long one of very few Republicans daring to speak out against the twice-impeached former president. Hogan, who is termed out of office in January, told CNN’s State of the Union it would be “a mistake” for Trump to run again, noting that the White House, Senate and House were all lost under his watch: He’s still the 800 pound gorilla. It’s still a battle that’s going to continue for the next few years. We’re two years out from the next election. And the dust is settling from this one. I think it’d be a mistake. Trump’s cost us the last three elections and I don’t want to see it happen a fourth time.
Over on NBC’s Meet the Press, Louisiana senator Bill Cassidy also laid Republicans’ poor showing at Trump’s door, alluding to his fixation with his 2020 defeat by Joe Biden, and candidates who bought into the lie that the election was stolen from him: Those that were most closely aligned with the past, those are the ones that underperformed.
We’re not a cult. We’re not like, ‘OK, there’s one person who leads our party’. If we have a sitting president, she or he will be the leader of our party, but we should be a party of ideas and principles. And that’s what should lead us. What we’ve been lacking, perhaps, is that fulsome discussion.
