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#EndorseThis: Angus King Endorses Clinton Due To Threat Of Trumpian Nuclear Catastrophe

#EndorseThis: Angus King Endorses Clinton Due To Threat Of Trumpian Nuclear Catastrophe

After recalling a sobering trip on the government plane intended to protect the president during a nuclear catastrophe, Senator Angus King (I-Maine) endorsed Hillary Clinton this morning, describing to CNN’s Chris Cuomo his terror at imagining Donald Trump’s itty bitty fingers on the nuclear trigger.

King said Donald Trump simply doesn’t have the “judgment and temperament” necessary to deal with a national disaster.

As King related on CNN’s “New Day” this morning, he visited a training exercise on a so-called “Doomsday plane” — part of the four-aircraft National Airborne Operations Center (NAOC) — meant to serve as a base for the president, secretary of defense, and Joint Chiefs of Staff during a catastrophe. King explained to Cuomo that as he saw the Air Force Officers on the plane respond to a simulated nuclear attack, he was struck by the fact that in such a scenario, “there’s one person making a decision about the future of civilization” — the president.

“And then I thought about Donald Trump,” he continued. “And it’s a question of judgment and temperament, and this guy has not demonstrated to me the kind of coolness that you need in that situation.”

King is one of two independent senators, and he is the last senator who caucuses with Democrats to endorse Hillary Clinton. The other independent is Bernie Sanders, who endorsed Clinton on Tuesday, albeit awkwardly. The other senator from Maine, Republican Susan Collins, remains undecided about whether to endorse Trump, although she has criticized his campaign in the past and has mentioned the possibility of supporting Hillary Clinton instead. On the other hand, Maine’s governor, Paul LePage, has supported Trump for several months and appeared with him on the campaign trail.

Check out King’s interview here, where he tells the NAOC story and contrasts Trump’s statements with Clinton’s calmer testimony in the 2015 Benghazi hearings:

And if you’re curious about the NAOC, check out this clip, courtesy of a National Geographic Channel show aptly titled “American Doomsday.”

Photo: Twitter/New Day

WATCH: Senator Offers To Waterboard Dick Cheney

WATCH: Senator Offers To Waterboard Dick Cheney

Senator Angus King (I-ME) sharply criticized Dick Cheney on Sunday, offering to waterboard the former vice president if he truly doesn’t believe that the “enhanced interrogation technique” is torture.

King was set off by Cheney’s recent remarks that waterboarding — a practice in which water is poured over an immobilized inmate’s face to simulate drowning — “wasn’t torture.”

“If I would have to do it all over again, I would,” Cheney said at American University on March 28. “The results speak for themselves.”

Citing a recent report by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (on which he serves), King ripped Cheney’s claim.

“I sat and re-read the entire report last week,” King told MSNBC’s Steve Kornacki. “It’s shocking.”

“And frankly, I was stunned to hear that quote from Vice President Cheney just now,” King continued. “If he doesn’t think that was torture, I would invite him anywhere in the United States to sit in a waterboard and go through what those people went through, one of them a hundred and plus-odd times.”

“That’s ridiculous to make that claim. This was torture by anybody’s definition,” the senator added. “John McCain said it’s torture, and I think he’s in a better position to know that than Vice President Cheney. I was shocked to hear that statement that he just made. And to say that it was carefully managed, and everybody knew what was going on, that’s absolutely nonsense.”

King, an Independent who caucuses with the Democratic majority, has never been one to mince words. In September, he memorably insisted that the Koch brothers and others who persuade Americans to opt out of health coverage “are guilty of murder.”

Photo: Gage Skidmore via Flickr