Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE) responded Tuesday to President Donald Trump’s attacks on a federal judge by saying that no branch of the government should attack any other.
“It is really important for us to reaffirm the three branches of government that all take an oath to the Constitution, all try to uphold and defend individual rights and are supposed to check and balance one another,” Sasse told MSNBC’s Katy Tur. “So no branches of the government should be attacking other branches of the government. We should holding each other to more account and we have not been doing enough of that for a long time.”
In a series of tweets criticizing Judge James Robart after the judge blocked his immigration executive order, Trump wrote over the weekend: “If something happens blame him and court system.” Sasse criticized those remarks at the time.
Sasse said Tuesday it wasn’t up to either political party in particular to “check the inclination for people to consolidate power,” but rather to civil society and the separate branches of government.
“We need more skepticism, one branch of another, but we don’t need so much hope and trust in these two political parties because, frankly, neither of these two political parties is very impressive right now,” he said.