Rep. Mark Sanford, R-S.C., said that President Trump was attempting to send “a very chilling message” to lawmakers after Trump called Sanford a “nasty guy” earlier this week.
“Because I had spoken up on a number of things that were at odds with stances I had long taken or at odds with people I represented, I was singled out,” Sanford told Jake Tapper on Wednesday. “And I think part of what the president did yesterday was to send a very chilling message to my colleagues on, ‘Hey, if you speak up against me, there will be consequences.’ And I think that’s the last thing we need in our political system.”
Trump called Sanford a “nasty guy” as he met with GOP lawmakers Tuesday evening, a move that came after he condemned Sanford on Twitter shortly before polls for his primary race closed last week.
“Mark Sanford has been very unhelpful to me in my campaign to MAGA. He is MIA and nothing but trouble. He is better off in Argentina,” Trump tweeted. “I fully endorse Katie Arrington for Congress in SC, a state I love. She is tough on crime and will continue our fight to lower taxes. VOTE Katie!”
Sanford said he has been “overwhelmed” by how many fellow colleagues have approached him to say “awfully kind things” following Trump’s attack Tuesday.
South Carolina state Rep. Katie Arrington defeated Sanford in the primary race. Sanford claimed he lost the primary because he wasn’t “Trump enough.”
“People are running for cover because they don’t want to be on the losing side of a presidential tweet,” Sanford said in an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “The idea that you can’t speak out and say, ‘I disagree with you here, but I agree with you on 90 percent of the stuff’ … is, again, a twilight world that I’ve never seen.”
[Related: GOP lawmaker: Trump’s comments on Mark Sanford ‘a dazzling display of pettiness and insecurity’]
