Roberts calls Trump’s comments ‘abhorrent’ but sticks by campaign

Sen. Pat Roberts said Monday that he abhors Donald Trump’s recently surfaced video comments on women but continues to support the Republican presidential nominee’s candidacy and will continue to advise him on agricultural policy.

On Friday, a video surfaced in which Trump boasted of kissing and groping women and getting away with it because of his status as a wealthy celebrity. In Sunday night’s presidential debate, Trump apologized and called the comments a form of “locker room talk.”

“I found Mr. Trump’s commentary, even though it was 10 years ago, abhorrent,” Roberts said.

In the wake of the inflammatory video, dozens of Republican elected officials and party elders have announced they are abandoning their party’s nominee.

But Roberts said he has had to balance Trump’s questionable temperament against Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s questionable honesty, and he sides with Trump.

“(Regarding) Hillary, I have a real problem. I think she’s been very duplicitous,” Roberts said.

He said that’s backed by the release of e-mails, also over the past weekend, that indicate she had public and private positions on banking issues, which she sought in the debate to dismiss as a routine part of politics.

“I’d use the word ‘perfidy,’ ” Roberts said. “That’s a pretty fancy word, that’s a Senate word, and if you look it up, it means you say one thing and then you do another.”

For example, he cited Clinton’s calling the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement a “gold-standard” pact when she was secretary of state and then calling for it to be renegotiated while campaigning for president.

He also said he trusts Trump more with Supreme Court nominations and to slash government regulations that he thinks hurt the Kansas economy.

Roberts, chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, has been part of a panel advising Trump on federal farm policy. He said he plans to continue in that role.

He said his office supplied language on international trade designed to help open overseas markets to Kansas farmers and meat producers.

“They came out (in Trump’s campaign platform) exactly word for word,” Roberts said. “Mike Pence (Trump’s vice presidential nominee) had a little bit to do with that, because I know him and I knew him in the House.

“We want to talk trade, we might at least be in the room.”

This story was originally published October 10, 2016 at 6:32 PM with the headline "Roberts calls Trump’s comments ‘abhorrent’ but sticks by campaign."