He kisses dictators' butts: Republican senator Sasse rips Trump over foreign policy

WASHINGTON: A Republican senator told constituents that President Donald Trump "kisses dictators' butts," mistreats women and uses the White House as a business, according to a leaked phone call recording.

Nebraska Senator Sasse said that Trump is "TV-obsessed" and "narcissistic", has driven US allies away and toward China, and has deeply damaged the Republican Party. Assailing "the way he kisses dictators' butts," Sasse accused Trump of ignoring China's oppression of Uighurs and the Hong Kong democracy movement.

"He hasn't lifted a finger on behalf of the Hong Kongers. It isn't just that he fails to lead our allies, it's that the United States now regularly sells out our allies under his leadership," he said.

Sasse also said Trump "spends like a drunken sailor" and mocks evangelical Christians, an important Republican voter group, behind closed doors, while taking aim at "the way he treats women." "His family has treated the presidency like a business opportunity. He has flirted with white supremacists," he continued.

Sasse, who is running for a re-election, said in the phone call that he has never been a supporter of the president, and warned that Trump's "likely" loss in the November 3 election could also end Republican control of the Senate. "I'm now looking at the possibility of a Republican bloodbath in the Senate, and that's why I've never been on the Trump train," he said.

He also said Trump never treated the COVID-19 crisis seriously, but only as an issue of the news cycle. But he also used his comments to warn against supporting Democrats, saying Trump was "driving the country further to the left."

He argued that Democratic control of the Congress and White House would threaten religious freedom and the erosion of other rights and in 10 years make the US Supreme Court "Venezuela-like." And he warned Trump could be driving young people and women permanently to the Democratic Party. 

In that case, he said, Republicans will be asking the question, "What the heck were any of us thinking, that selling a TV-obsessed, narcissistic individual to the American people was a good idea?"