Joking that former President Donald Trump is “(expletive) crazy” has New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu launching major damage control.
“It was a joke,” Sununu said Monday on the Howie Carr Show. “It’s a roast. ... We all dumped on everything.”
Sununu, a Republican, made headlines after his salty quote before a mostly left-leaning crowd at the Gridiron Club dinner in Washington, D.C., this past weekend. That’s the banquet attended by mostly upper-echelon media types out for political roasting. And Monday, the governor made the rounds to make amends, also going on the air on the Dan Rea Show on WBZ.
“The press often will ask me if I think Donald Trump is crazy,” the governor reportedly said at the event. “I’ll say it this way: I don’t think he’s so crazy that you could put him in a mental institution. But I think if he were in one, he ain’t getting out.”
Sununu accused critics of his smackdown against the former president as members of the “woke left cancel culture,” he told Howie. Trump and Sununu, both potential rivals for a GOP presidential nomination in 2024, are sure to revisit this episode.
As Politico wrote, it was like the pandemic never happened, as D.C.’s high society descended on the Renaissance Hotel downtown for the first Gridiron gathering in three years.
If Sununu was hoping his knock on Trump would stay in the room, he’s now seeing the error in that thinking. His f-bomb has been reported on all sides of the political spectrum — with many questioning if he can survive taking on Trump.
Some suggest Trump even decided to run for president after being the brunt of former President Barack Obama’s Gridiron skewering in 2011 at the White House correspondents’ dinner.
In that speech, Obama said: “Is this dinner too tacky for The Donald? What could he possibly be doing instead? Is he at home, eating a Trump steak, tweeting out insults to Angela Merkel? What’s he doing?”
He didn’t stop, adding: “There’s one area where Donald’s experience could be invaluable, and that’s closing Guantanamo. Because Trump knows a thing or two about running waterfront properties into the ground.”
Sununu said, in trying to deflect some of the heat, “Everyone is just too uptight.” He did say he’d vote for Trump again … if he was the GOP nominee.
