County Council President Nancy Floreen didn’t mince words Monday when she talked about Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump—a man she called “a disreputable candidate.”
“I think he has denigrated democracy and our process for having a conversation, how we treat people, how we treat people with respect, how we welcome people who are not like us, how we deal with things we wish didn’t happen to us,” Floreen said during her weekly press briefing.
“And I think in particular the atmosphere of hate that he has encouraged … is very damaging and scary,” she said.
Floreen, a Democrat, usually spends a portion of Monday mornings talking with the press about Montgomery County issues. After being asked about the possibility of voter fraud, Floreen took a side trip into national electoral politics Monday.
“I don’t know how people teach their children about democracy and about their voting and election process seeing such an extremist out there,” she said.
“We have never, if you ask me, had such a disreputable candidate garnering such national attention,” Floreen said. “It’s very sad and quite demoralizing to anyone who cares about this country.”
Trump has said he thinks the 2016 election will be rigged and has accused the media of bias toward Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.
“I think that claims of voter fraud have been wildly exaggerated. I’m not sure we’ve had any documentation of that happening around here, and very few actual documented cases of that happening anywhere,” she said.
Floreen said she plans to vote for Clinton in the Nov. 8 general election. She said she has been spending her free time in Pennsylvania helping Clinton’s campaign.
Asked if she’ll seek a fifth term on the council—if a ballot question calling for a charter amendment that would impose term limits fails—Floreen would only say, “We’ll see.”
