On Sunday’s broadcast of CBS’s “60 Minutes,” outgoing Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) discussed his time in the U.S. Senate, oftentimes being a “maverick,” and about his friendship with President Barack Obama, who was a freshman senator the same time Coburn was.
According to Coburn, “a genuinely very smart, nice guy” and a “a neat man.”
“My relationship with Barack Obama isn’t based on my political philosophy or his,” Coburn said of Obama. “It’s based on the fact that I think he’s a genuinely very smart, nice guy. I just love him as a man. I think he’s a neat man. You don’t have to be the same to be friends. Matter of fact, the interesting friendships are the ones that are divergent.”
Coburn recounted his opposition to the so-called “Bridge to Nowhere,” which ruffled the feathers of some of his GOP colleagues.
“The bridge to nowhere,” Coburn said. “And– and this is right after Katrina happened. And so I offer an amendment to take that money from Alaska and repair the stuff in Louisiana … I lost that. But I won that. I absolutely won that because the American people.”
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