Awkward! After someone forgot to switch off a microphone at the end of a Senate subcommittee hearing on Tuesday, July 25, two senators were caught dissing President Donald Trump on a hot mic.
Chairman of Transportation, Housing, and Urban Development Appropriations Subcommittee Susan Collins and Sen. Jack Reed were unknowingly recorded discussing the federal budget and calling 71-year-old Trump “crazy” in audio obtained by The Washington Post.
“I swear, [the Office of Management and Budget] just went through and whenever there was ‘grant,’ they just X it out,” said Collins, a Republican senator from Maine. “With no measurement, no thinking about it, no metrics, no nothing. It’s just incredibly irresponsible.”
“Yes,” Reed, a Democrat from Rhode Island, responded. “I think — I think he’s crazy. I mean, I don’t say that lightly and as a kind of a goofy guy.”
“I’m worried,” Collins added.
The two senators continue to discuss the budget and their concerns before the topic changes to Representative Blake Farenthold, whose appearance they discussed. “I don’t mean to be unkind, but he’s so unattractive it’s unbelievable,” Collins said.
Collins’ spokeswoman Annie Clark released a statement after the conversation went public, saying: “Senator Collins is worried about the elimination of transportation and housing programs in the president’s budget request that are critically important to local communities across our country, such as: TIGER, CDBG, Essential Air Service, HOME as well as major reductions to FAA, Amtrak, and rental assistance, which serves predominantly older and disabled individuals.”
Trump was caught on a hot mic himself in 2005 with Billy Bush in a now infamous lewd exchange about women that also was made public by The Washington Post in October 2016.