The Atlantic

Jeff Flake Hints at the T-Word

The retiring Arizona senator criticizes President Trump like no other Republican. On Thursday, he accused the commander in chief of “giving aid and comfort to an enemy of democracy.”
Source: Alex Brandon / AP

Eighteen months into Donald Trump’s tumultuous tenure in the White House, and days into a ferocious public backlash against Trump’s meeting with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Jeff Flake stands alone among the president’s Republican critics in the Senate.

Bob Corker, who once Trump’s White House to an “adult day-care center,” vacillates between defiance and deference. Ben Sasse keeps his occasional barbs confined mostly to Twitter. The president’s vanquished GOP rivals—Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Lindsey Graham—have, apart from the occasional spat, returned to the fold. Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski revolted on health care, but they backed Trump on taxes and judges, and their public criticism is more restrained. John McCain, Trump’s chief tormenter in 2017, now lashes the president only from afar, his

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