President Donald Trump on Wednesday said Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) “did the smart thing” by announcing that he will not run for reelection because “he would never have won.”
Trump told reporters as he walked to Marine One that Flake’s “poll numbers in Arizona are so low that he couldn’t win.”
“And I don’t blame him for leaving. I think he did the right thing for himself,” Trump said. “He was against me from before he ever knew me.”
In his announcement on Tuesday, Flake condemned the degradation of political civility in the age of Trump, the “coarseness of our leadership” and the “regular and casual undermining of our democratic norms and ideals.”
Trump on Wednesday said he mistook Flake for a Democratic politician the first time he saw the Republican senator on television.
“The first time I saw him on television, I said, ‘I assume he’s a Democrat. Is he a Democrat?’ They said, ‘He’s a Republican,'” Trump said. “I said, ‘That’s impossible.'”
He said Flake has “terrible” poll numbers and has “done terribly for the great people of Arizona.”
“He would have never won. In fact, even in the primary, he’s way down in the primary. So he did the smart thing for himself,” Trump said. “This way he can get out somewhat gracefully.”
Trump also swiped at Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN), whose criticism of the President has become increasingly blunt since Corker announced he will not run for reelection in 2018.
“You know what?” Trump said. “I really believe that Bob Corker’s going to do the right thing also.”
Trump’s remarks about Corker and Flake appeared at odds with his earlier claim that there is “great unity in the Republican party.”
“We have great unity,” he said. “I think the Republican Party has a pretty good unity.”
