Sen. Ben Sasse reiterated on Sunday that he frequently considers leaving the Republican Party and is tired of the partisan gridlock inside the Washington Beltway.
Sasse, R-Neb., a deeply conservative lawmaker who has been a frequent critic of the Trump White House, said that neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have “a future for the country” and that both are more focused on stymieing the other than passing actual legislation.
“The main thing the Democrats are for is being Anti-Republican and Anti-Trump,” Sasse said on NBC's “Meet the Press.” “The main thing the Republicans are for is being Anti-Democrat.”
When asked about how frequently he considers leaving the Republican Party, Sasse said he thinks “about it every day” and added that the Republican Party today bears little resemblance to the “party of Lincoln and Reagan.”
Sasse’s comments come a day after the Nebraska lawmaker responded to a question posed to him on Twitter.
The commenter said she believed changing her Democratic affiliation to "no-party" would be "part of the solution" and then asked the first-term senator whether he might follow suit.
His response: "yep — regularly consider it (except the 'from Dem' part)"
Just before that, Sasse wrote of his fear that "we're headed toward a place where hefty majorities of both sides of the electorate are going to regularly embrace unsupported and blatantly false assertions."
Republicans hold a 51-49 edge in the Senate going into the November elections.
Sasse has been one of the most frequent and vocal critics of Trump policies – calling out the president for his handling of issues ranging from gun control to tariffs. While admitting that the president has been successful in some respects - including the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court – Sasse added that "it’s pretty obvious” that the president’s administration is “a reality show soap opera.”
"What you'd like is the president to not worry so much about the short-term of staffing, but the long-term of vision-casting for America," he said.
Sasse also made news last week when he lashed out at Trump for complaining that his own Justice Department's indictments against two Republican congressmen were endangering the GOP's midterm election prospects.
"The United States is not some banana republic with a two-tiered system of justice — one for the majority party and one for the minority party," Sasse said in a statement.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.