Just as Trump supporters were ready to label Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) as the biggest appeaser of Democrats in the United States, two-time Barack Obama endorser and former Secretary of State Colin Powell emerged from the shadows to say the GOP needs to “get a grip on itself” as they defend Trump from impeachment.
Speaking to a crowd at The Jefferson Series, Powell said that Republicans need to find the courage to speak out against wrongdoing when it presents itself.
“The Republican party has got to get a grip on itself,” Powell said, as reported by The Hill. “Republican leaders and members of the Congress, both Senate and the House, are holding back because they’re terrified of what will happen to any one of them if they speak out.”
Powell went on to say that America’s foreign policy is “in shambles right now” under President Trump, creating an environment he cannot understand, citing instances like “sharpiegate” as examples of where America is headed.
“I see things happening that are hard to understand,” he said. “This is not the way the country is supposed to run. And Congress is one of the institutions that should be doing something about this. We’ve got to remember what the Constitution started with: ‘we the People,’ not ‘me the President.'”
Keep in mind, Colin Powell said this about President Trump after endorsing Barack Obama twice, despite his failure with the “Arab Spring” and the toppling of Libya, which led to the attack on the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi that left four Americans dead, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens.
Though Powell has often stayed out of the spotlight during the Trump presidency, he emerges every now and then to give some dire warning about how troubling the country has become under the leadership of the Republican president. Last year, Powell declared that Trump is making the world a worse place by “insulting people.”
“I hope the president can come to the realization that he should really stop insulting people,” Powell told Fareed Zakaria. “I used this two years ago when I said I could not vote for him in the 2016 election. Why? He insulted everybody. He insulted African-Americans. He insulted women. He insulted immigrants. He insulted our best friends around the world. All of his fellow candidates up on the stage during the debates. He continued, “I don’t think that’s what should be coming out of a president of the United States. But I don’t see anything that’s changed in the last two years.”
“The world is watching,” Powell concluded. “They cannot believe we’re doing things like separating mothers and children who are trying to get across the border from south of our border. They can’t believe we’re making such an effort to cease immigration coming into the country. It’s what’s kept us alive!”
Much of Powell’s rhetoric about President Trump echoes that of former Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), who warned his former colleagues in the GOP that they are at risk of losing their soul if they continue supporting Trump.
“Trust me when I say that you can go elsewhere for a job. But you cannot go elsewhere for a soul,” Flake said in a recent op-ed for The Washington Post.