WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Angus King, an independent from Maine, said he sees a difference in President Donald Trump’s Cabinet nominees, many of whom he believes were picked because they are loyal to him.
His Cabinet eight years ago was more “well-respected, well-qualified people,” King said.
King attended Trump’s first inauguration and said his most vivid memory was hearing him utter the words “American carnage.”
In contrast to hopeful inaugural speeches of the past, Trump said then that a “different reality exists” for many Americans trapped in poverty, for communities that lost factories, for schools that left “our young and beautiful students deprived of knowledge” and “the crime and gangs and drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential.”
“This American carnage stops right here and stops right now,” Trump said in his speech. He has repeated those themes throughout the last eight years.
“It was a very jarring moment,” King said.
Story by Mary Clare Jalonick.
