Sununu says GOP won’t be Trump’s party forever: ‘A‑‑holes come and go’

New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu (R) said Thursday he was very optimistic about the future of the Republican Party and the country, saying former President Trump “won’t be here” forever and, at some point, the GOP will no longer be loyal to him.

“People confuse the party with Trump,” Sununu said in an interview with Politico’s Eugene Daniels, who responded by noting that “it’s Trump’s party.”

“That’s the point,” the governor responded. “It won’t be his party forever, right? It just won’t. At some point, Donald Trump won’t be here or whatever, you know. One way or another, we all have our time.”

“So I’m very optimistic about the Republican party,” Sununu said. “I’m very optimistic about where we’re going as a country.”

Sununu — a moderate Republican who was one of GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley’s most effective campaign surrogates on the campaign trail in New Hampshire — made the case that the country has survived tremendous hardships and its institutions have held strong.

“If you’re one of these people that think, ‘Democracy’s getting eroded and the institutions are crumbling’: Stop. It’s not. This country has gone through hell and back a lot,” Sununu said.

“We had, let’s go all the way back to a Civil War, where we were getting completely torn apart. Our institutions stood strong. We go through World War I and World War II, we go through the racism and segregation of the ‘60s,  you go through a place like 1968, where some of America’s great voices are literally getting assassinated in front of us on television. And people said, ‘It’s over. America’s done.’ But we stood. The institutions stood strong. We rallied back. We went through 9/11; we went through a pandemic. The institutions stood strong.”

Sununu reiterated his confidence in the GOP’s ability to survive Trump.

“Let me put it a different way: A‑‑holes come and go. But America is here to stay,” Sununu said.