Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, warned that a Donald Trump presidency is a threat to the Republican Party that could “tear it to shreds.”
“I think he could do great damage to the party. He already has,” DeLay said Wednesday when asked by CNN’s Brooke Baldwin if the Republican Party would be in trouble if the casino tycoon and media mogul is elected to the White House.
DeLay pointed to Trump once suggesting that he may consider nominating his sister — a federal judge in New Jersey who helped take down that state’s partial birth abortion ban — to the Supreme Court.
“The infighting that’s going on within the party is not helpful, but when he becomes president — if he becomes president — and he starts governing, the first thing out of the box, he wants to appoint someone like his sister, who’s a pro-abortionist, to the Supreme Court,” DeLay said.
“That would split the party right down the middle, I mean it would just tear it to shreds,” added DeLay.
Baldwin brought up the possibility that Trump often says inflammatory things to get people fired up, evident by the large number of people going to the polls. She asked DeLay if he would support Trump if the businessman were to walk back some of his remarks later, an idea the former lawmaker quickly rejected.
If Trump doesn’t mean what he’s been saying, “then he is a con man,” said DeLay, reciting a line of attack that GOP rival Marco Rubio has used lately to attack Trump.
“You gotta say what you believe, and tell the American people what you would do, so they can make a decision, not based on getting fired up, but based upon what you truly believe and where you want to take this country,” DeLay said.
DeLay served as House majority leader from 2003 to 2005. He was indicted in 2005 on election law charges, but that conviction was overturned on appeal.
