Sen. Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican and outspoken critic of President Donald Trump, will not seek reelection in 2018, he announced Tuesday.
Flake delivered a long and searing indictment of the president and his fellow Republicans who remain loyal to the administration.
"When the next generation asks us, 'Why didn't you do something? Why didn't you speak up?' What are we going to say?" Flake said. "Mr. President, I rise today to say, enough."
Flake went on to warn his colleagues, and the country, that failing to stand up to Trump could spell disaster for the nation.
Here are the highlights:
- "It is time for our complicity and our accommodation of the unacceptable to end."
- "We must never regard as 'normal' the regular and casual undermining of our democratic norms and ideals. We must never meekly accept the daily sundering of our country — the personal attacks, the threats against principles, freedoms, and institutions, the flagrant disregard for truth or decency, the reckless provocations, most often for the pettiest and most personal reasons."
- "With respect and humility, I must say that we have fooled ourselves for long enough that a pivot to governing is right around the corner, a return to civility and stability right behind it. We know better than that. By now, we all know better than that."
- "The notion that one should stay silent as the norms and values that keep America strong are undermined and as the alliances and agreements that ensure the stability of the entire world are routinely threatened by the level of thought that goes into 140 characters — the notion that one should say and do nothing in the face of such mercurial behavior is ahistoric and, I believe, profoundly misguided."
