Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

Fact Check

Trump Falsely Denounces Jeff Flake by Calling Him a ... Democrat?

Senator Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona, last week in Washington.Credit...Al Drago for The New York Times

President Trump falsely dismissed Senator Jeff Flake as a Democrat on Wednesday, offering a distorted timeline of their conflict a day after Mr. Flake, Republican of Arizona, announced his retirement with a strongly worded rebuke of the president.

“Long before he ever knew me, during the campaign, even before the campaign — I mean, he came out with this horrible book, and I said, ‘Who is this guy?’” Mr. Trump told reporters on Wednesday afternoon. “In fact, I remembered the first time I saw him on television I had not really been — nobody knew me in terms of politics.”

“But the first time I saw him on television, I said, ‘I assume he’s a Democrat. Is he a Democrat?’” Mr. Trump said. “They said he’s a Republican. I said, ‘That’s impossible.’”

In truth, the two men met in early July 2016 at a private Republican summit meeting on Capitol Hill, after Mr. Trump had won the last primaries but before the Republican National Convention, where he accepted the party’s nomination. Mr. Flake has said that he began working on his book, “Conscience of a Conservative,” during the general election. Mr. Trump posted several tweets calling him “weak” in September 2016. The book was published in August.

The White House did not respond to inquiries about when Mr. Trump initially saw Mr. Flake on television or what prompted the assumption that the senator was a Democrat. But the characterization is perplexing given the Mr. Flake’s consistent standing as one of the more conservative members of the Republican Party since he was first elected to Congress in 2000.

In the 1990s, Mr. Flake served as the executive director of the Goldwater Institute in Arizona, a libertarian think tank named for Barry M. Goldwater, the deeply conservative senator. While a member of the House of Representatives for 12 years, Mr. Flake staked his reputation on being a fiscally responsible conservative, voting against spending bills and waging fights over earmarks.

His lifetime voting record has averaged high marks from libertarian and conservative groups, including 95 percent from FreedomWorks, 93 percent from the American Conservative Union, 97 percent from Americans for Prosperity and 73 percent from Heritage Action.

In his 2012 Senate campaign, Mr. Flake’s endorsements included former Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, the National Rifle Association and FreedomWorks. Representative Pete Sessions, then the National Republican Congressional Committee chairman, called Mr. Flake a “stalwart fiscal conservative.” For the past two years, Mr. Flake has been responsible for producing the annual “Wastebook” that details examples of wasteful government spending.

Mr. Flake’s support for immigration, which in his Tuesday retirement speech he characterized as a traditional conservative position, has roiled some of his fellow Republicans over the years. He ran afoul of Tea Party activists during his 2012 campaign and was criticized for being a member of the Gang of Eight, a bipartisan group of senators tasked with immigration reform in 2013.

Breitbart News characterized him as a supporter of “amnesty.” The conservative commentator Ann Coulter listed him among “our stupidest Republicans” and proposed that someone challenge him in the primary race. And the conservative radio and TV personality Glenn Beck, a former admirer of Mr. Flake, called him a “Tea Party favorite who quickly lost his soul after taking his oath of office.”

Immigration aside, Voteview, which places congressional votes on an ideological map, has consistently ranked Mr. Flake among the most conservative members of his party. According to this metric, Mr. Flake was the second most conservative member of the House from 2001 to 2005 before slipping to No. 3, where he remained until he joined the Senate. Currently, only two senators — Rand Paul of Kentucky and Mike Lee of Utah — are more conservative than Mr. Flake, according to Voteview.

Govtrack, a website that monitors legislative actions, assigns an ideological score based on bill sponsorship. Mr. Flake has ranked among the middle the pack by this measure, ranging from No. 17 in 2013 to No. 32 in 2015.

While Mr. Flake has consistently criticized Mr. Trump since the 2016 presidential election, he has voted in support of the president 90 percent of the time — a fact that Mr. Trump noted in his remarks on Wednesday and said was “good.”

Get politics and Washington news updates via Facebook, Twitter and in the Morning Briefing newsletter.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 17 of the New York edition with the headline: Rebuke Is a Stretch, Even for the President. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT