Independent senator Angus King blasted President Donald Trump‘s rhetoric attacking the intel whistleblower and crying “treason” on CNN tonight.

King told Anderson Cooper the Ukraine call transcript contains “pretty powerful evidence” and said he has questions about the full call because “I had two staff members of my office the other day read it aloud and we timed it. They read it in normal speaking pace. It took 10 minutes and 40 seconds. The phone call was 30 minutes.”

“We don’t know what’s missing. It may be there was a translator involved and that made it go much longer,” King continued. “But the president of Ukraine speaks English. If there was no translator, that raises a question of what’s in the other 20 minutes of that discussion.”

AT one point he also said it’s “really bothering” him that the word “treason” is being thrown around by the president:

“Treason is the only crime specifically defined in the Constitution…, as siding with an enemy of the country in a war. And to throw it around in this situation — the problem is the president feels that he’s the state, you know, like Louis XIV. ‘I am the state.’ So criticism of him is treason against the United States. That’s not true. That’s not the way it works.”

He also brought up Trump’s rhetoric about spies and what the U.S. used to do to spies, saying, “That’s a threat.”

You can watch above, via CNN.

from Mediaite https://ift.tt/2ogvLe1