Roberts: Stump on Trump: he's a "deranged thug"

Arizona Corporation Commissioner Bob Stump, in an interview with the Arizona Capitol Times, denounced Trump as a “deranged thug” and a “con artist” – one who won’t win in November.

He called on the party to pick a different nominee in Cleveland.

“I have the luxury, of course, of being term-limited,” he told the Cap Times’ Luigi del Puerto. “Many of my colleagues, I understand, are between a rock and a hard place. You have the issue of party loyalty, but then you have the issue of loyalty to country. When I see a candidate, no matter what his party affiliation, who appears to be a deranged thug, who revels in his vulgarity, a pathological liar who loves dictators, a fornicator, and that’s the only apt word – boy, I sound like a jerk – and surely the biggest con artist to ever run for president, then I feel, as I have to, to stay true to my principles and not keep silent.”

Sen. Jeff Flake is one of the few major Republican politicians who hasn’t jumped on the Trump bandwagon. But Flake’s comments – suggesting that the party pick a different nominee -- don’t come close to Stump’s.

Stump, who chairs the Phoenix Opera, called Trump an “operatic candidate.”

“If you want to experience human emotion in all its bright, primary colors, fury, lust for power, impulse to avenge, thirst for blood, jealousy, and the folly of human endeavors, you can attend a Trump rally, or you can see an opera,” he said.

He likened Trump to the Kardashians and said his success is due to frustration among voters.

“I hope my party will rise to the occasion in Cleveland and recognize the errors of its ways, and I hope the delegates, indeed, choose someone else… The question becomes: Is Trump a symptom or a cause of what I think is a certain Kardashian culture. He certainly is a Kardashian candidate. There is a sense of frustration among Republicans that the party has betrayed them, and so, instead of reforming the party, they want to burn it to the ground. And I think much of their impulse to support Trump appears to be less due to some of his specific policy positions, and more, again, to use an operatic image, a sense of twilight of the gods. They want to burn Valhalla to the ground, and of course, Valhalla was destroyed in Wagner’s opera due to the hubris of the gods, and so it’s the hubris on the part of some Republican elected officials that have caused many Republicans to look to a man who is certainly burning the Republican Party to the ground.”

Rarely will you hear me say this about a member of the Corporation Commission but here it goes:

Stump's right.