New Hampshire’s Republican governor had blistering remarks for Donald Trump at the annual Gridiron Dinner in Washington DC on Saturday, ripping the once and possible future White House contender as “f----g crazy” during a roast of his fellow Republicans and the DC elite.
Chris Sununu took the stage at the first Gridiron Club dinner to be hosted in several years (thanks to pandemic-related concerns) and proved that he was willing to say what Politico Playbook described as “what most Republicans in Washington *privately* whisper about Donald Trump.”
After mockingly praising the president’s supposed composure on social media, Mr Sununu quipped: “Nah, I’m just kidding! He’s f----g crazy!”
He then added to the crowd: “Come on. You guys are buying that? I love it … He just stresses me out so much!”
Mr Sununu’s roast of Donald Trump did not end there. He went on to say that Mr Trump could find himself locked up in a mental institution.
“The press often will ask me if I think Donald Trump is crazy,” said Mr Sununu. “And 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!”
The comments were rare, to say the least, to hear from a GOP governor even more than a year after the former president left office. Mr Trump remains the de facto leader of the Republican Party and has at least the public support of most Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill — not to mention a wide swath of the GOP base, which has indicated that it greatly favours Mr Trump winning the party’s presidential nomination in 2024.
Mr Sununu in recent months took the same path as Maryland’s moderate GOP governor, Larry Hogan, and declined to run for his party’s nomination to the US Senate. The two men are both presumed to be considering bids for the White House, as are a number of other high-profile GOP figures who have unlike Mr Sununu and Mr Hogan have remained steadfastly loyal to Mr Trump.
The former president himself has not ruled out another bid for office and indicated in a recent interview that he had no interest in a bid by far-right Republicans to install him as Speaker of the House if Democrats lose control of the chamber this year; at the time, he also said that he was looking at his options for the future.
Mr Trump’s involvement in the January 6 attack on Congress, a result of his false claims about the 2020 election, continues to be probed by the House select committee investigating the riot and in court documents lawmakers have alleged recently that there is evidence to suggest the former president engaged in a criminal conspiracy to overturn the election.
