at The Blaze

Republican Sen. Mike Lee went off on an epic rant against Donald Trump Wednesday when one show host asked the Utah lawmaker why he hasn’t endorsed the presumptive GOP nominee.

Newsmax TV anchor Steve Malzberg wanted to know why Lee isn’t “out there trumpeting Trump,” adding that he “doesn’t understand” why he wouldn’t be backing the billionaire businessman. Lee offered a laundry list of reasons.

“Hey look, Steve, I get it. You want me to endorse Trump,” Lee responded. “We can get into that if you want.”

At that, Lee slammed Trump for pushing a conspiracy theory that Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s father, Rafael, was involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and said the candidate’s comments about Muslims are “religiously intolerant.”

“We can get into the fact that he accused my best friend’s father of conspiring to kill JFK,” the senator said. “We can go through the fact that he’s made statements that some have identified correctly as religiously intolerant. We can get into the fact that he’s wildly unpopular in my state, in part because my state consists of people who are members of a religious minority church.”

Lee added that part of the reason some Utahns — many of whom are Mormon —  dislike Trump is because, as “a people who were ordered exterminated by the governor of Missouri in 1838,” policy proposals like the real estate mogul’s Muslim ban “make them nervous.”… read more here