Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) said Thursday that her Republican colleagues are a lot more honest about President Donald Trump behind closed doors than in public.
During an appearance on MSNBC, the Missouri Democrat ticked off what she had heard from GOP senators about the president behind his back.
“Nuts, weak, doesn’t really understand government, doesn’t care to understand anything complicated, asks and says the most unbelievable things in meetings that clearly shows he doesn’t understand the subject matter, no intellectual curiosity,” said McCaskill, who lost her re-election bid in November.
“I believe history will judge down the line those members of the Republican Party who have silently looked down and think they can just wait this out, without even speaking up about the level of lying that goes on,” she added.
Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill are sticking with Trump even as new allegations filed last week by federal prosecutors in New York against his former personal lawyer Michael Cohen implicated the president in campaign finance crimes. A judge sentenced Cohen to three years in prison this week.
In a tweet on Thursday, Trump did not directly dispute directing Cohen to make payments to women who accused him of having an affair in order to keep them quiet. Trump said, however, that he “never directed Michael Cohen to break the law. He was a lawyer and he is supposed to know the law.”
McCaskill expressed astonishment in her interview on MSNBC about Trump’s attempt to distance himself from Cohen.
“I mean, think about this,” she said. “The president this morning tweeted there is nothing wrong with paying off a porn star that you had an affair with in order to win the presidency, right before the election. ... That’s what he basically said. That’s crazy.”