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Colin Powell: The Republican Party Needs to ‘Get a Grip on Itself’

The former secretary of state took Republicans to task for being “terrified” of speaking out about Trump.

Former secretary of state Colin Powell said the Republican Party needs to “get a grip on itself.” “Right now Republican leaders and members of the Congress, both Senate and the House, are holding back because they’re terrified of what will happen to any one of them if they speak out,” he told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria during an interview at the New Albany Community Foundation in Ohio, referring to President Trump’s behavior and the impeachment inquiry. Powell, who served as national security adviser to President Reagan and secretary of state under President George W. Bush, then touched on the recent debacle between Trump and the National Weather Service, when Republicans backed the president’s inaccurate rendering of a hurricane projection map. “In my time... one of us would have gone to the president and said ‘Mr. President, you screwed up,’” Powell said. “... This is not the way the country is supposed to run... And Congress is one of the institutions that should be doing something about this.”