Trump a 'chaos prez', says ex-senator Jeff Flake as he leads Republicans against POTUS and endorses Biden
The national conventions of the two major political parties this election year have perhaps seen more churning than ever in the past, thanks to President Donald Trump. While Republican leaders have been seen appearing at the Democratic National Convention last week to praise the party’s nominee Joe Biden, Democratic lawmaker Vernon Jones has slammed his own party at the Republican National Convention on Monday, August 24.
To add to the drama, former Arizona senator Jeff Flake led dozens of members of ‘Republicans against Trump’ on the first day of the national convention that kicked off in Charlotte on Monday. Flake, who served between 2013 and 2019, is known to be among the prominent conservative critics of the president who have backed Biden.
Flake was among more than two dozen former Republican Congress members who endorsed Biden for president on Monday, shortly before the GOP convention started. Flake spoke in a live video on several social media platforms to say that he has plans to vote for Biden and not Trump because “given what we have experienced over the past four years, it’s not enough just to register our disapproval of the president”. Flake called Trump a “chaos president” while labeled Biden a "decent" man who knows how to compromise. "We need to elect someone else in his place, someone who will stop the chaos and reverse the damage," said Flake.
Last year, Flake urged fellow Republicans in an op-ed in the Washington Post last September to “save their souls” and vote for the president’s impeachment. However, the GOP stood by Trump who was impeached by the Democrats-dominated House but survived in the Republicans-dominated Senate.
Flake has always been a vocal critic of Trump and in 2017, while announcing that he would not run for a Senate reelection, said to decimate the current administration: "We must never regard as ‘normal’ the regular and casual undermining of our democratic norms and ideals. We must never meekly accept the daily sundering of our country – the personal attacks, the threats against principles, freedoms, and institutions, the flagrant disregard for truth or decency, the reckless provocations, most often for the pettiest and most personal reasons, reasons having nothing whatsoever to do with the fortunes of the people that we have all been elected to serve.”
The Biden campaign was elated with Flake’s endorsement and told Fox News that it was a “strong rebuke” of the Trump administration. “These former members of Congress cited Trump's corruption, destruction of democracy, blatant disregard for moral decency, and urgent need to get the country back on course as a reason why they support Biden,” one campaign official was quoted as saying. “These former Members of Congress are supporting Joe Biden because they know what's at stake in this election and that Trump's failures as President have superseded partisanship.”
Last week, a number of Republicans including former Ohio governor John Kasich spoke at the Democratic national convention where he praised Biden saying despite being a “lifelong Republican”, he was at the Dems’ convention because of the responsibility he has towards his country. With the likes of Flake and Kasich throwing their weights behind Biden, the Democrat’s campaign is hoping that the ‘Republicans for Biden’ effort will gain momentum across the nation among the conservatives who are unhappy with Trump’s way of functioning.