Republican Lawmaker Warns: GOP’s Blind Devotion To Trump Is A ‘Cancerous Growth’ On Party

GOP Rep. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.), who lost his reelection bid in Tuesday’s Republican primary, blasted his own party, saying its blind loyalty to President Trump is a “cancerous growth” that’s killing the GOP.

“It is a cancerous growth,” the outgoing congressman told Rolling Stone magazine. “The basis on which people’s frustrations have been built is real and understandable in the way that at times Washington doesn’t work for them or their families and those they love.”

Sanford added that the idea that Republican lawmakers must align closely with the president is “metastasizing.”

“And I think that again that which gave rise to the Trump phenomenon needs to be acknowledged as real and valid. I think the metastasization component is the way in which at times the president has pandered in his answers suggesting that there’s an easy cure.”

Sanford, who had served in the House since 2013, lost the GOP nomination to South Carolina state Rep. Katie Arrington, who recently called the GOP the “party of President Donald J. Trump.”

Sanford disagreed with Arrington’s assessment, saying that he pledges allegiance to the flag, not Trump.

“Those were her words and I could not more vigorously disagree,” Sanford said. “It’s the party of a lot of people across this country that have worked hard and licked envelopes and stamps and all the things you do in advancing campaigns and the ideas that surround them. It doesn’t belong to somebody at the top in Washington, D.C., and yet that’s what we’ve morphed into.”