Sanford hits back at Trump over ‘biased, demeaning’ attack

Rep. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.) on Tuesday responded to President Trump after the president took shots at the GOP lawmaker, who lost his primary race last week.

Sanford told The Washington Post that Trump’s remarks during a Tuesday meeting with House Republicans on Capitol Hill were emblematic of the president’s “caustic and counterproductive” personal style.

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“I would say the comment goes to the core of why I have at times agreed with policies of the administration but at the same time found the president’s personal style so caustic and counterproductive,” the GOP lawmaker and member of the House Freedom Caucus told the Post.

“The tragedy of the Trump presidency is that he thinks it’s about him. The president has taken those earnest beliefs by so many people across the country and has unfortunately fallen prey to thinking it’s about him,” Sanford added.

Sanford told the Post he was glad to hear that some members of the GOP caucus booed Trump over the remarks, which he called a “biased, demeaning and pejorative comment.”

Trump blasted Sanford as a “nasty guy” during his comments Tuesday night, after first sarcastically telling the audience of Republicans that he wanted to “congratulate him on running a great race.”

Sanford said in a Sunday interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” that his lack of complete support for Trump contributed to his downfall in South Carolina’s GOP primary.

“People are running for cover because they don’t want to be on the losing side of a presidential tweet,” he said. “The idea that you can’t speak out and say, ‘I disagree with you here, but I agree with you on 90 percent of the stuff’ … is, again, a twilight world that I’ve never seen.”

Trump’s remarks followed a tweet he sent hours before polls closed in the primary endorsing state Rep. Katie Arrington (R) and alluding to Sanford’s 2009 affair with an Argentine woman.

“Mark Sanford has been very unhelpful to me in my campaign to MAGA. He is MIA and nothing but trouble. He is better off in Argentina,” Trump tweeted. “I fully endorse Katie Arrington for Congress in SC, a state I love. She is tough on crime and will continue our fight to lower taxes. VOTE Katie!”