Kelly Ayotte doesn’t trust him with the nuclear codes and Marco Rubio still think he’s a con man, but they’re both still voting for Donald Trump for President anyway.
In recent interviews, Ayotte — who trails her challenger by ten points in a new poll — has dodged whether she would trust a man who can barely control what he tweets with the nuclear codes, a true test of whether or not someone is fit to be President. The AP:
The senator, a prominent voice on national security issues, would not say whether she trusted Trump with the codes to the nation’s nuclear arsenal. Instead, she noted Congress’ oversight role.
“We have a strong system of checks and balances,” she said, promising to play an active role in national security whether Clinton or Trump wins the presidency. “I think he’ll surround himself, I assume, with people who will help him understand.”
In another interview, Ayotte again dodged the question and instead focused on Trump’s Democratic opponent:
Ayotte again repeated her ridiculous notion that her vote for Donald Trump does not equal an endorsement: “I’m gonna be voting for him,” she said. “But I do have significant disagreements with him…so I won’t be endorsing him.”
Look, maybe that “retweets are not endorsements” fine print works just fine on Twitter, but Ayotte is talking about casting her vote for a bigot who poses a direct threat to millions of people in the US, and even more around the world.
When you vote for that, you endorse that, plain and simple.
But over in Florida, gutless wonder Marco Rubio still takes the cake after saying that even though he stands by his statements during the Republican primary that Trump is a “con man” and “wholly unprepared to be President of the United States,” he’s still going to vote for him anyway.
“We’re in a different place now. Now we have a binary choice — not a choice between 15 people or 12 people. There are two people in the world that are going to be the next president, either Donald or Hillary,” Rubio said.
“In our republic, while the presidency is powerful, there is a balance of power in this country, and a significant amount of it resides in the United States Senate. It’s one of the reasons why I seek to run again,” he said, mimicking some of Ayotte’s talking points.
But with Trump appearing to show little understanding of US civics — and refusing to heed calls from leaders of his party to be more “Presidential” — good luck with getting him in line, Marco.
A better choice for Ayotte and Rubio would be to put country over party (as Republican Sen. Susan Collins recently did) and refuse to support Donald Trump for President, or risk being stained by Donald Trump for years to come.
“Kelly Ayotte can’t run from her Trump problem, and she can’t have it both ways,” said one New Hampshire organizer. “By supporting Trump, she’s supporting racism, climate denial, and violence.”
Endangered senators trapped between Trump and a hard place https://t.co/ZabtXqQ5zT pic.twitter.com/2bSMXzAf7P
— ThinkProgress (@thinkprogress) August 16, 2016
