Sounding very much like an aspiring 2020 candidate, former Attorney General Eric Holder ripped President Trump Wednesday night, saying any one of his children would make for a better president.
"There are a number of people who would be a better president than the person we now have in the White House who has broken through those norms, conducted himself in a way that’s inconsistent about what’s best about this nation, labeled people in very inappropriate ways, used inappropriate terms when talking about countries, turning his back on our immigrant heritage," Holder told MSNBC's Rachel Maddow. "Yeah, there are a number of people I think would be better president than Donald Trump."
Holder said Trump's criticism of some in the FBI are an attack on America's institutions, and that the Department of Justice will take years to recover from his criticisms.
"The real problem here is the president," Holder said. "The president going after named career people. The president saying things about the integrity of the those two institutions, the Justice Department, the FBI. No other president has ever said those kinds of things, conducted himself in that way. And he’s doing long-term harm to the reliable and integrity of the Justice Department and to the FBI."
"Long after he’s gone, we will see the impact of these attacks,” he added.
Holder, who is currently pushing an anti-gerrymandering campaign, said America's political system is "rigged," echoing the same criticism Trump made on the campaign trail, which many Democrats at the time said undermined faith in American institutions.
"I think people’s consciousness has been raised about the problem of — of gerrymandering," Holder said. "I mean, if you look at the state of Wisconsin where in 2012 Democrats won over 50 percent of the vote and then you look at the congressional delegation Democrats only have one third of the seats. If you look to at the legislator, Democrats have only about one third of the seats. And people are trying to — seeing that there are problems with that, you know, that the system is in fact rigged, that people’s votes in some ways done matter."
Holder, who made news earlier Wednesday when he pointedly left open the option of running for president in 2020, again left open the possibility.
"I will make a decision at the end of this year what I want to do with regard to a higher office," he told Maddow.