Jeff Flake To Trevor Noah: Donald Trump Veering Toward “Tin-Horn Dictator”

Donald Trump rose from reality TV show host to POTUS by out culture-warring the GOP, Republican Sen. Jeff Flake told Trevor Noah on The Daily Show.

The party’s drift in that direction began years ago, the Arizona senator said, explaining, “We could not be the party of fiscal conservatism when we were ballooning our debt. So we started to wage in the cultural wars, started arguing about flag burning. And we’ve gotten further and further down that road. Donald Trump latched on to that and put it into hyper-drive. Unfortunately, voters have gone along with him.”

Republicans in office need not push back at every nutty Trump tweet, Flake said. “But when he comes out, like did on Friday, and basically directs his FBI go after Democrats – that’s something you’d expect of a tin-horn dictator, not us. I would expect, and hope, my colleagues stand up when our institutions are being threatened when your separation of powers is under assault.”

At some unspecified point,  Flake forecast, “this fever will cool, and we will realize resentment and anger is not a governing philosophy” and “just inventing nicknames for your opponents not a philosophy. It’s a game.”