After Utah Sen. Mike Lee finished his speech Thursday championing collaboration, a man in the audience asked him about President Donald Trump.
“We seem to have a leader that when he doesn’t get his way resorts to ridicule and threats,” the man said. “What do you see happening in the next three and a half years to remedy that?”
The Republican senator smiled before offering a response.
Lee, who voted for independent presidential candidate Evan McMullin in protest of Trump, suggested that the president may be “unique in many, many ways” but is not the only politician who is tough or intimidating.
“Every president that I’ve seen in modern history — and not just every president, but many elected officials — [have been] sometimes inclined to engage in threats at one time or another.”
And while Trump has “a different approach and his format is off-putting to some,” Lee said he has decided to be more optimistic. He believes the president will hold true to his Inauguration Day promise of “transferring power from Washington, D.C., and giving it back to you, the American people.”
“I still hold out great hope that he means that,” Lee said.
The senator has had an uneasy relationship with Trump. During his campaign, Lee made “no secret” of his concerns about the then-GOP nominee. He worried about Trump’s proposal of a “religious test” to potentially ban Muslims from entering the United States. And he hoped Trump’s bombastic rhetoric would be toned down when he got to the White House.
But since Trump has been in office, Lee has pushed back on the administration’s plans to bolster civil asset forfeiture and opposed early drafts of health-care legislation that had the backing of the president (the senator ultimately voted for the final Senate bill to repeal Obamacare, though it failed to pass). The conservative lawmaker was also the only member of Utah’s congressional delegation to pointedly criticize Trump for his comments blaming both sides — white supremacists and those protesting them — after the violence in Charlottesville, Va.
That’s not to say Lee hasn’t found places of agreement. He supports the president’s appointment of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court and appreciates his efforts to roll back regulations. The senator, too, defended Trump, suggesting he did not obstruct justice in his interactions with former FBI Director James Comey.
“I’m encouraged by a number of things,” he said Thursday at his annual Solutions Summit in Salt Lake City.
The event, focused on collaboration in business and politics, kicked off with a news conference. During the interviews, Lee offered some harsh words for his congressional colleagues on health care, reported by The Deseret News.
“I don’t think senators, especially Republican senators, at this point have any business preaching to the president about leadership ability when we ourselves have failed to do that which we said we would for seven consecutive years.”
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