Longtime conservative Bill Kristol is unhappy with President Trump’s reshaping of the Republican Party with which he once aligned.
Kristol, who worked as part of the Reagan and George W. Bush administrations, claimed the damage Trump has done while in office will be difficult to repair once he is eventually out of office during a question-and-answer session with the Washington Post on Tuesday.
“We’re really going to pay a price for this terrible failure in leadership,” Kristol said. “Probably three years ago, I was a little more, ‘Look, the institutions are strong, and they will beat him back.'”
The Never Trumper credited those in the Republican Party who have been more critical of the president but said the party will likely have traces of Trump’s policies in it going forward even if he loses the 2020 election.
“At the end of the day, this is a party that nominated Bush and Dole and Bush and Bush and, you know, McCain and Romney,” he said. “You don’t look at that and think, ‘Oh my God, this is, like, anti-democratic or illiberal or horrible.’ But I think [the Republican Party] will be an unhealthy party until there’s an explicit repudiation of Trump.”
Kristol expressed ire at top Trump allies’ consistent support of Trump.
“I can’t honestly conceive of working with Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn and Kevin McCarthy,” he said. “I’m just disgusted by what they’ve been doing.”
Kristol went on to say he fought to get Republicans to support impeaching Trump during his Senate trial over the accusation that the president solicited foreign interference to help boost a victory for him in the 2020 election.
Trump became the third president in U.S. history to be impeached. He was acquitted by the Republican-led Senate. Throughout the trial, Trump denied any wrongdoing.
Utah Sen. Romney was the sole Republican who voted to convict Trump. Kristol praised Romney’s decision and said there are too many Republicans who may dislike Trump in private but won’t say so in public.
“We fought hard trying to get Republicans to do the right thing and failed entirely, except for Romney,” he said. “I think that brought home to me, and should have brought home to everyone, that Republican members of Congress should get zero credit for saying things in private that they’re not willing to say in public.”
“I guess I am a little depressed by the failure of civic and political courage in standing up to Trump,” he added. “We’re not back in Germany. We’re not in the Soviet Union. We’re not even in Hungary, in Venezuela. I mean, what are you really putting on the line?”
