Warren: Baker needs to “stand up to Trump”

By Evan Lips | October 11, 2016, 17:25 EDT

U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren rakes cranberries in a cranberry bog in Buzzards Bay. Photo courtesy of Twitter.

BOSTON — U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Hillary Clinton’s unofficial Twitter attack dog when it comes to her bruising campaign against GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump, is now openly questioning why Gov. Charlie Baker isn’t doing more to slam the Manhattan real estate mogul.

First reported by Politico Massachusetts, Warren apparently “dared” the Republican governor to “stand up to Trump” during a question-and-answer session held with reporters following a tour of a drought-stricken cranberry bog in Buzzards Bay on Monday.

Baker has constantly tried to distance himself from Trump, first during the primary season and again after Trump scored the nomination. He was noticeable absent from July’s Republican National Convention in Cleveland.

Warren visited the bog a day after a brutal second presidential debate and three days after the leak to the Washington Post of a 1995 recording of Trump boasting that his stardom has allowed him to grope women without their consent.

According to the Boston Herald, Warren told reporters at the impromptu bog press conference that Baker’s refusal to endorse Trump “is not enough.”

The day after publication of the Trump tape, Baker’s office issued a statement stressing that the governor “did not support (Trump) to be the presidential nominee in the first place” while describing Trump’s secretly-recorded remarks as “disgusting.”

“Donald Trump is right now the leader of the Republican Party,” she said. “I think that means that every Republican needs to make clear where they stand. Are they still with Donald Trump, like Paul Ryan is? Or have they said, ‘No, that’s not my Republican Party.’ ”

Warren later described Trump’s surprise press conference held prior to the debate, one in which he invited three women who have accused Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton, of rape and sexual harassment and another woman raped as a child whose attacker happened to be represented by Hillary Clinton in court as “enough to turn my stomach.”