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GOP Sen. Sasse "not going to waste a single minute" on Trump's tweets

17 October 2020
Dan Ackermann

A spokesperson for Ben Sasse, the Republican senator who this week unloaded on President Trump, said Saturday that the Nebraska politician was "not going to waste a single minute" on the president's most recent Twitter attack.

Driving the news: Trump, in a series of tweets Saturday morning, called Sasse a "liability" to the GOP and an "embarrassment to the Great State of Nebraska."

  • "The least effective of our 53 Republican Senators, and a person who truly doesn’t have what it takes to be great, is Little Ben Sasse of Nebraska," Trump tweeted.
  • The statements came after Sasse, in a Wednesday call first reported by the Washington Examiner, told constituents that Trump mishandled the pandemic, "kisses dictator's butts," "sells out allies," "mocks evangelicals," and has "flirted with white supremacists."

What he's saying: James Wegmann, Sasse's spokesperson, tweeted Saturday morning that, "Ben said the same thing to Nebraskans that he has repeatedly said to the President directly in the Oval Office."

  • "Ben is focused on defending the Republican Senate majority, and he's not going to waste a single minute on tweets," Wegmann added.

Between the lines: Sasse, who was endorsed by President Trump in 2019, is running for re-election in Nebraska, where the president currently leads over Joe Biden by eight points, according to a recent Axios/SurveyMonkey poll.

  • But Biden's national polling lead against Trump has widened to double-digits. The former VP holds a narrower advantage in states needed for an Electoral College victory, such as Florida and Pennsylvania.
  • The GOP is also fighting to keep control of the Senate. Of the 12 incumbent Republicans believed to be facing competitive challenges, the Cook Political Report has rated seven as "toss ups" and two as "lean Democratic."
  • Sasse has been a critic of the president in the past, but remained largely silent while he was fighting to win the GOP nomination in the Nebraska primary this May.

The big picture: Since May, however, Sasse has appeared to ramp up criticism of the president, with Trump often shooting back.

  • In August, after Sasse said "the pen-and-phone theory of executive lawmaking is unconstitutional slop," referring to Trump's executive orders, the president retorted, calling the Republican senator a "RINO," meaning "Republican in name only."

Go deeper: Ben Sasse emerges as GOP Trump critic ahead of November

Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times

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Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.

Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.

The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.

  • The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.

What the transcripts say:

  • Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
  • The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
  • Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."

Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.