GOP Sen. Ben Sasse offered a parting blow to Trump as the Nebraskan leaves Congress.
Sasse, who is moving on to academia, said it’s “sad” the former president is so “needy and desperate.”
The Nebraska Republican also praised Trump for appointing conservative judges.
Outgoing Republican Sen. Ben Sasse offered a parting shot at Donald Trump shortly before leaving the Senate, saying he’s “sad” for the former president, while also praising Trump’s conservative judicial appointments.
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“I’m just sad for him as a human because obviously there’s a lot of complicated stuff going on in that soul,” Sasse told the Omaha World-Herald of Trump. “Just at a human level, I’m sad for him to be that needy and desperate.”
Sassed added that on a policy level, “I always loved that he kept his word on the judges … And so we got to work closely on judges.”
Sasse formally resigned from the Senate on Sunday to become the next president of the University of Florida. A staunch conservative, the Nebraskan worked with the Trump White House on a myriad of policy issues. But Sasse never connected with Trump on a personal level, frequently criticizing the candidate and later president in a fractious relationship that culminated in Sasse’s vote in favor of convicting Trump for inciting the Capitol riot.
“The president repeated these lies when summoning his crowd — parts of which were widely known to be violent — to Capitol Hill to intimidate Vice President Pence and Congress into not fulfilling our constitutional duties,” Sasse said in a statement after joining six fellow Republicans in voting to convict Trump.”Those lies had consequences, endangering the life of the vice president and bringing us dangerously close to a bloody constitutional crisis.”
JD Vance is joining a distinctive club of conservatives who parlayed their celebrity into a GOP seat
Incoming Sen. JD Vance continues a tradition of celebrities who broke into Republican politics.
Some of his predecessors on Capitol Hill include actor Fred Thompson and singer Sonny Bono.
Their pre-congressional careers include stints on Broadway and reality TV, and in blockbuster movies.
Newly minted Republican Sen. JD Vance of Ohio won’t just be replacing retiring Sen. Rob Portman in the 118th Congress. He’ll be joining the cadre of right-leaning actors, singers, and reality TV personalities who traded on their celebrity to secure a spot on Capitol Hill.
While plenty of lawmakers pen tell-all books and pseudo-presidential campaign manifestos throughout their political careers, Vance just happened to get his first page-turner out of the way before arriving in Washington.
But a trailblazer he is not.
Here are five other cultural figures, listed by when they joined Congress, who beat Vance to the punch of becoming Republican lawmakers.
Late Sen. George Murphy
Murphy was a star of the stage and screen before making his way to the nation’s capital.
The Connecticut native performed song and dance numbers in various Broadway shows, appeared in nearly four dozen movies over a 30-year career, and was twice elected president of the Screen Actors Guild.
He got involved in California politics in the 1950s, and was elected to the US Senate in 1964.
Murphy lost his bid for reelection in 1970, serving just a single term in office. He died in May 1992.
Former Rep. Fred Grandy
While he’s been acting for nearly 50 years — and continues to do so today — Grandy’s most iconic role remains his breakout turn on ’70s dramedy “The Love Boat.”
Grandy spent over a decade playing cruise ship purser Burl “Gopher” Smith, a sometimes bumbling staffer with a heart of gold. He’s popped up on other popular series like “Fantasy Island,” “Charlie’s Angels,” and “The Mindy Project,” from time to time, but will forever be associated with the Pacific Princess and all the wackiness that took place on board.
He won one of Iowa’s House seats in 1986, serving four terms in Congress — a tour that included a stint on the powerful Ways and Means Committee. Grandy tried to unseat incumbent Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad in late 1994, but wound up losing by 2 points.
Grandy has been a conservative commentator on talk radio for several years now.
Late Sen. Fred Thompson
Thompson juggled his two great loves, acting and the law, throughout the course of his star-studded career.
He put the law degree he earned at Vanderbilt University to good use as staff counsel on the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities a.k.a the Watergate Committee that investigated then-President Richard Nixon. He later logged similar stints as special counsel on the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and the Senate Intelligence Committee.
After nearly a decade of digging behind the scenes on Congress’s behalf, Thompson stepped into the spotlight in Hollywood. The towering Tennessean started showing up in TV shows and movies including “No Way Out,” “Roseanne,” “The Hunt for Red October,’ “Die Hard 2,” and others.
He pivoted back to politics in 1994, running in a special election to fill the Senate vacancy left by Vice President Al Gore. Thompson won that race, and a subsequent full term in office when he was back on the ballot in 1996.
Shortly after leaving Congress, he landed his definitive acting role: District Attorney Arthur Branch on legal drama “Law & Order.” He went on to stick with that from 2002 until 2008 — bowing out of the award-winning show to mount an unsuccessful bid for president.
Thompson died in late 2015.
Late Rep. Sonny Bono
The singer-songwriter will forever be remembered as half of ’70s musical juggernaut Sonny & Cher.
The author of their iconic hit “I Got You Babe,” Bono strived to keep them both busy, cranking out popular albums, booking TV and movie roles, and even launching variety shows like the “Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour.”
Bono broke into politics by serving as mayor of Palm Springs, California. He served two terms in the US House as a congressman from California.
Bono died in office in January 1998. He was succeeded by his fourth wife, Mary Bono, who held the same seat until 2013.
Former Rep. Sean Duffy
Duffy first splashed onto the scene as a cast member of MTV’s long-running reality series, “The Real World.”
He was tapped as the resident conservative for the sixth season of the show, which took place in Boston, being deliberately tossed into the mix by producers who were clearly hoping for fireworks between him and some of his Black and LGBTQ roommates. Tensions occasionally flared over the course of the 23-episode season, but Duffy mostly just went with the flow.
Like many other MTV reality show participants, Duffy wound up appearing on their other shows, including “Road Rules: All Stars” — which is where he met his future wife and “Real World: San Francisco” alumna, Rachel Campos.
Duffy spent several years as a district attorney in Wisconsin before winning his way to the US House in 2010. He spent nearly a decade on Capitol Hill before resigning in 2019 to tend to family issues related to health complications faced by his ninth child.
As for his legacy, Sasse told the World-Herald that in addition to working with Trump to confirm conservative judges, including three Supreme Court justices, he is proud of his work on the Senate Intelligence Committee and for his role in the creation of the Cyberspace Solarium Commission, a bipartisan panel focused on advising a strategy to thwart major cyber attacks.
Sasse’s retirement leaves a temporary hole in the closely divided chamber. Republican Gov. Jim Pillen, who was just sworn in last week, will now appoint someone to serve out the remainder of Sasse’s term.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has made it clear he wants now-former Gov. Pete Ricketts, whose family owns the Chicago Cubs and made a fortune in financial services, to come to Washington. It also helps that Ricketts is a close ally of Pillen, who was his preferred replacement. Ricketts ran unsuccessfully for the Senate in 2006, losing handily to then-Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson. Ricketts later resurrected his political career as a two-term governor, using his personal wealth to push his favored causes and candidates.
Sasse’s appointment to lead the University of Florida was not without controversy. His only experience leading a university comes from his time as president of Midland University, a small, private Lutheran university in Fremont, Nebraska home to more than 1,600 students. By comparison, Florida boasts an enrollment of over 60,000.
