On Monday, former Governor of Texas Rick Perry chronicled his exit from the Trump White House, tweeting his tenure as energy secretary was a “great ride.”
But Perry really cemented his legacy as a loyal soldier in the Trump era over the weekend. His boss, he said, is God’s “chosen one.”
Perry was alluding to comments made by the president back in August. While defending the ongoing trade war with China, Trump said at the time, “I am the chosen one,” apparently joking.
Perry doesn’t seem to think it was a joke. “I said, ‘Mr. President, I know there are people that say you said you were the chosen one’ and I said, ‘You were,’” Perry said in an interview with Fox News on Sunday. “I said, ‘If you’re a believing Christian, you understand God’s plan for the people who rule and judge over us on this planet in our government.’”
Perry previously called Trump a “cancer on conservatism” and “a barking carnival act” in 2015.
The past couple weeks have not been kind to the Trump administration, as numerous public impeachment hearings tore apart Republican defenses. Perry’s name came up in the hearings as well when Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland testified that Perry was part of the Trump administration’s efforts to extort Ukraine to get dirt on the Bidens, and that they did so at the direction of the president himself. “Everyone was in the loop,” said Sondland.
In addition, Perry appears to have engaged in a quid pro quo of his own, with reports alleging that he used his power as secretary of energy to get a lucrative gas deal in Ukraine for his political donors.
In light of these revelations, Rep. Joaquin Castro of San Antonio, who sits on the Intelligence Committee that is leading the impeachment inquiry, called on Perry to testify. He has previously refused to comply with a House subpoena.
“Rick Perry and others were apparently on the mission to help the president accomplish it,” Castro said last week. “These guys really weren’t carrying out diplomatic work. They were carrying out the president’s dirty work, and it looks like they were trying to enrich the president or their friends.”
Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty Images
