While Republicans from all levels of Washington D.C. politics flock to defend President Donald Trump amid the fallout from his controversial phone call with the Ukrainian president, former Secretary of State Colin Powell a self-described moderate Republican, held nothing back on his thoughts on the current state of the party.
According to The Hill , Powell spoke to an audience recently at The Jefferson Series, an event hosted by The New Albany Community Foundation, at which he was asked about his thoughts on Trump’s recent controversy.
He implied that Republican leaders in both the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate were hesitant to speak out against Trump for fear of potentially losing a primary election.
“The Republican party has got to get a grip on itself,” Powell explained to speaker Dr. Fareed Zakaria.
“Republican leaders and members of the Congress, both Senate and the House, are holding back because they’re terrified of what will happen to any one of them if they speak out.”
The retired four-star U.S. Army general went on to blast the current state of U.S. foreign policy, saying he thinks it’s in “shambles.”
“They need to get a grip, and when they see things that aren’t right they need to say something about it. Because our foreign policy is a shambles right now, in my humble judgement. And I see things happening that are hard to understand,” Powell said.
According to Time , Powell served as secretary of state under former President George W. Bush and as Joint Chiefs of Staff under the late George H.W. Bush. He began his high-profile political career as Ronald Reagan’s national security adviser.
Powell specifically referenced the sharpie incident in which the president drew an extended path on a weather chart showing Hurricane Dorian reaching Alabama — a move that was highly criticized and even joked about in the mainstream media.
He added that during his time in the White House, it would have been a matter of him or someone at his level telling the president that a mistake was made and that it needed to be corrected, but instead, he pointed out that the White House ordered other departments to blindly back what the president said about Dorian on a path to strike Alabama, which was shown to be false.
Powell is one of a small list of high-profile Republicans who have spoken out against the president as the Ukraine phone call scandal continues to rage.
As The Inquisitr reported, Utah Sen. Mitt Romney recently criticized the president for calling on China to investigate Joe Biden and his family, a criticism which Trump harshly rebuked via social media by launching a hail of insults against the Republican senator, including a call for his impeachment.