GOP Gov. Sununu calls Trump ‘crazy’ and more at Gridiron Dinner

[cigaretteman]

After a two-year hiatus due to COVID-19, the glitzy Gridiron Club and Foundation dinner roared back to life Saturday, with the Republican speaker, New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, going past the point of no return when he said of former President Donald Trump:“You know, he’s probably gonna be the next president. No, I’m just kidding. He’s f---ing crazy. Are you kidding? Oh, come on,” he said to laughter.



Sununu actually used f--- twice in front of a ballroom full of journalists to make his points about Trump’s mental health.

Scatology aside, Sununu is the very rare Republican like Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois willing to call out the election-denying, conspiracy-mongering Trump, who is mulling a 2024 presidential bid.



Saturday marked the 137th Gridiron dinner, with the club an organization of Washington journalists. I’m a member and was president in 2017. About 630 folks attended the white-tie and gown dinner. The musical skits lampoon Democratic and Republican White House, congressional and political figures. I was in the chorus.


Unlike the much larger White House Correspondents’ Association dinner — coming back this year on April 30 — the Gridiron is not televised or photographed, though the show is on the record.

Sununu spoke for the Republicans. Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., represented the Democrats. President Joe Biden did not attend; Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo represented the administration.

Highlights:​

Biden

Biden made a video for the Gridiron on Friday.


“I really wanted to be with you tonight — for the Gridiron dinner. But the truth is — I just couldn’t find a seven-hour and 37-minute gap in my schedule,” Biden said.

While the quip is a reference to the seven-hour gap in White House phone records from Trump on Jan. 6, 2021, the joke turned out to be close to the reality:The reception started at 5:30 p.m. and Raimondo didn’t even begin her speech until 10:54 p.m.




And this: “One of my colleagues pointed out — they didn’t elect me to be the next FDR. And the truth is, I’m not. FDR won the state of Georgia four times. In the last election, I only won Georgia three times.”

Raskin

Speaking after Sununu, Raskin said, “I haven’t heard a Republican use the “F” word like that since the Nixon administration. But Governor Sununu’s eloquent profanity is the kind of insurrection the GOP really needs. We are going to need a lot more Republicans speaking like the Great Governor of New Hampshire.”


Kinzinger and wife Sofia became new parents when their son, Christian, was born on Jan. 19. Raskin used the Kinzinger baby as a foil in a bit.


Mocking himself — and playing off the Senate Judiciary Committee Supreme Court confirmation hearing for Ketanji Brown Jackson, where the Trumpiest Senators grilled her on the books kids read at the private Georgetown Day School – where Jackson is on the board —Raskin congratulated the Kinzingers.

“The parents were over the moon that their newborn son scored a 9 on his Apgar test and an 8 on his Critical Race Theory exam. That kid is straight-up Georgetown Day School material,” said Raskin, noting “my own insufferable wokeness and smug erudition.”

More Sununu

“The press often will ask me if I think Donald Trump is crazy. And, and, I’ll say it this way. This is probably the best 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 was “astonished’ when he was driving to a New Hampshire event with Trump and Trump saw people holding flags.


“He says, see this. If you see someone holding a flag, it means they love me. They love me. They’re holding the American flag. They love me.” Trump points to a person and says, ‘That guy loves me.”

Zings Sununu, “Now I can’t help but notice the guy he pointed at — the sign he is holding says, ‘f--- Trump.’ Absolutely true.”

Raimondo

“A month ago, I was held back in the State of the Union to be the designated survivor. Now that’s a strange experience. The truth is, it’s pretty much a formality, except if something terrible happens, you could suddenly be the president of the United States.

“I think that’s probably why Pete Buttigieg kept calling me to ask if he could do it.”

GOP Gov. Sununu calls Trump ‘crazy’ and more at Gridiron Dinner

Sununu is the very rare Republican like Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois willing to call out the election-denying, conspiracy-mongering Trump.

chicago.suntimes.com

 

[cigaretteman]

Nobody is playing as interesting a political game in the Republican Party right now as New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu (R). The looming question is: How committed is he to expanding the game board?
Sununu has, in recent months, inserted himself in the national dialogue by trying to act as a voice of reason in today’s GOP. The latest came this weekend, when at a comedy-themed dinner he said aloud what Politico says “most Republicans in Washington *privately* whisper” about former president Donald Trump: He’s crazy.

Sununu set up his joke at the Gridiron dinner by citing the possibility that Trump would return to the presidency after the 2024 election. He cited the “experience,” “passion” and “sense of integrity” Trump demonstrated in his tweets.

“Nah, I’m just kidding,” Sununu said. “He’s f---ing crazy.”






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Sununu added: “The press often will ask me if I think Donald Trump is crazy. 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.”
As one might expect, Sununu on Monday morning sought the plausible deniability that comes with delivering such remarks at a roast-style event.
“I don’t think he’s crazy,” Sununu said, according to the New Hampshire Journal. “It’s all a joke.”
Perhaps! But many a true word is said in jest. And Sununu had to know how such a joke would be received in a party still so thoroughly dominated by Trump. Even in his remarks to the Gridiron dinner, he joked, “I’m going to deny I ever said it.”

(Sununu also took aim at Trump’s business ventures, saying Mike Lindell’s MyPillow is “crap” and, “You only find that kind of stuff in the Trump hotel” — another joke likely to stick in the former president’s craw.)


It’s also merely the latest in a long line of comments in which Sununu has differed with not just Trump, but the broader GOP.
Sununu broke that GOP’s heart late last year when he declined to run for Senate in New Hampshire, blaming the national GOP for its lack of ambition and contentedness with simply blocking President Biden’s agenda. He said he had been “pretty close” to running but declined after consulting with GOP senators about the party’s plans.

“It bothered me that they were okay with that,” Sununu said.
The comment was particularly biting given that Republicans have indeed declined to articulate a 2022 agenda, and here was a big-name Republican confirming that the party doesn’t really have any ideas. Biden later cited Sununu’s comments while arguing that Republicans have no idea what they are for.


Sununu also derided the national GOP in late 2021 for its handling of various internal matters: the removal of Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) from GOP leadership, the lack of censure for Rep. Paul A. Gosar (R-Ariz.) after he posted an anime video featuring him killing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), and the targeting of 13 House Republicans who provided the decisive votes to pass Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure bill.

“I think it says that we have our priorities wrong,” Sununu said. He said that while Gosar deserved censure, the party was eating its own by going after Cheney and members who voted the wrong way.
When, earlier this year, various Republican senators and conservative commentators criticized Biden’s promise to appoint a Black woman to the Supreme Court as “affirmative action” or a “quota,” Sununu was one of the few to directly rebuke that line of argument.


“I don’t see things as quotas like that, no,” he said, adding: “You want folks with a diverse set of backgrounds, of course. So in that sense, no, I wouldn’t agree it’s a quota.”
And most recently, Sununu hamstrung the GOP’s efforts to add a winnable congressional seat in New Hampshire, which has been trending blue at the federal level. He said he would veto a map that would’ve transferred 25 percent of the state’s population between the state’s two districts: “It doesn’t really pass the smell test, right?”

What’s interesting about what transpired this weekend is that Sununu took aim at Trump. He’s differed with Trump occasionally — including on potential pardons for Jan. 6 defendants and Trump’s bogus claims of widespread voter fraud — but generally his comments have focused on how the broader GOP has conducted itself. That’s a less fraught pursuit, and possibly a more advantageous one for a guy running for reelection as governor in a bluish-purple state.






Taking on Trump — even jokingly — carries all kinds of consequences. And Sununu is familiar with them. For a few months, former Trump campaign manager and New Hampshire politics veteran Corey Lewandowski has been talking about running a primary challenger against Sununu. And Lewandowski re-upped that possibility this weekend, saying that “if the right Republican were to run against him, I’d be willing to bet Donald Trump would endorse [Sununu’s] opponent.”
It seems unlikely that Sununu will face a serious primary, given that it’s only five months away, he’s pretty popular (including in the GOP), and no serious challengers have stepped forward. (They’d have until June 10.) But Sununu had to know he was tempting fate. And his comments Monday suggest he’d rather not have these particular comments blow up too much.

Therein lies that difficult dance so many have attempted during the Trump era. They’d like you to know that they’re not really on board with the former president and that maybe it’s time for the party to shift toward steadier and more principled leadership. But they’d also prefer not to have Trump supporters think they’re Never Trumpers.


Even those who have tried some halfway version of that dance — see, for example, former senators Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) — have found themselves so marginalized that they’ve been cast out or forced into retirement. Perhaps that’s gradually changing, with Trump now out of office. And it’s somewhat easier if you’re a governor who doesn’t have to constantly contend with the national spotlight.
Sununu presents a potentially significant case study in that he’s not a governor of a true-blue state — such as Maryland’s Larry Hogan or Massachusetts’s Charlie Baker — and he could have a future in the national party, including a potential run for president. He’s also pointing to the broader ways that his party has lost its bearings — a problem that goes well beyond Trump himself — which, taken together, could add up to a pretty coherent campaign message.
We’ll see just how committed he is to his critique of the party. Regardless of the intent behind his remarks this weekend, if he wasn’t on people’s radars before, he probably should be now.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/04/04/post-politics-now-jackson-biden/#link-N3FC4E33HZAAPHCZURGX5G2R34