Nebraska Republican Says ‘I Don’t Really Understand What Motivates the President’

Yes, even Republicans are shaking their heads trying to figure out what Donald Trump is thinking. Long-time Trump critic and Nebraska Republican Sen. Ben Sasse joined MSNBC’s Morning Joe this morning to explain to the hosts that the Donald Trump’s behavior is literally beyond his understanding:

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“I don’t really understand what motivates the president…’

He’s not alone. While Sasse was talking to Morning Joe, Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) was professing ignorance on CNN’s New Day, saying that,

“I think we still need to figure out what the president was talking about when he talked about wiretapping, we know that President Obama personally would not have done that.”

When co-host Mika Brzezinski asked Sasse if Trump should apologize for those wiretapping accusations, Sasse professed ignorance of Trump’s motivations:

Mike Brzezinski: How do you recover from a lie that has really put a stain on the presidency? At this point, should President Trump apologize? Would that even help at this point?
 
Ben Sasse: Well, I don’t really understand what motivates the president, but I hope that the president will take a long-term view of what the country needs. When people look back on his administration –
 
Brzezinski: Would it help if he got real with everybody and said ‘I’m sorry’?
 
Sasse: Yes. Listen, Russia has tried to do terrible things, not just to America but to NATO, the most successful military alliance in two millennia.
 
Brzezinski: Doesn’t seem to get it.
 
Sasse: The president should, if he had nothing personally to do with Russia, he should care deeply about saying, “hey, I’m the man that has the sign that says ‘the buck stops here.’ I wanna figure out everything that happened and I want the exhaustive investigation to clear the deck.”

Clearly what we think Trump needs to do, should do, and must do, is something very different than what Trump will do. His decision-making process, as Sasse points out, and as his decision to have Rex Tillerson skip a NATO meeting to go to Russia instead, is beyond explanation or understanding.

Ben Sasse had reservations before the election, explaining then that Trump’s platform was nebulous to him and apparently, he has found no enlightenment since.

While his is not the only head shaking on Capitol Hill, he is, unfortunately, one of the few Republicans willing to speak his reservations about Donald Trump.

Hrafnkell Haraldsson

Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen’s Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.