Jeff Flake: GOP Needs to ‘Shun This Conspiratorial Fringe Element of the Party,’ Including Trump

Friday on CNN’s “At This Hour,” former Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) urged the GOP to “shun” the “conspiratorial fringe element of the party” if it wants to win elections moving forward.

Flake, who has long been vocal about his disdain for former President Donald Trump, emphasized that Republicans should break from Trump and his supporters like Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and instead turn to someone like former House Speaker Paul Ryan.

“I do believe … that most Republicans out there want to get back to a party that believes in ideas, the kind that Paul Ryan described. But that subset of a subset of Republican voters that vote in primaries in droves still, you know, when they talk about let’s move on away from this commission or away from all of this, what happened in the last election, we still have in Arizona a Republican Party doing a recount of the 2020 election,” Flake outlined.

“So, too many Republicans don’t want to move on, and I would just ask people, I mean Republicans, do you want to be the party of Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene or one more of where Paul Ryan is? And the Paul Ryan kind of wing of the party is the one that can grow and actually be a majority party in the future,” he added. “You know, the other party can win a few elections here or there, but we’ll lose over time. And Republicans, until we want to start winning elections, we’re going to have to, you know, shun this conspiratorial fringe element of the party. That’s all there is to it. And that includes the former president.”

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