At his Tuesday night rally, President Donald Trump lashed out at Sens. Jeff Flake and John McCain but stopped short of doing so by name. | Alex Brandon/AP Trump goes after Flake by name, after pledging not to

Just hours after pledging not to go after Republican senators by name, President Donald Trump on Wednesday morning took a direct swipe at Jeff Flake, one of his most vocal GOP critics.

“Phoenix crowd last night was amazing — a packed house,” Trump wrote on Twitter, fresh off his Tuesday night rally in Arizona. “I love the Great State of Arizona. Not a fan of Jeff Flake, weak on crime & border!”


Flake was among the handful of GOP lawmakers who did not endorse Trump for president. In his recently released book, titled “Conscience of a Conservative,” the Arizona senator wondered whether Republicans had made a “Faustian bargain” in backing Trump in order to gain control of the White House, seizing the presidency at the expense of their principles.

Trump, in response, has written warmly on Twitter of Kelli Ward, a conservative former state senator who announced that she will challenge Flake when he is up for reelection next year.

At his Tuesday night rally, Trump lashed out at both Flake and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) but stopped short of doing so by name because, he said, he had been told not to.

“One vote away, and I will not mention any names. Very presidential, isn't it?” Trump said, a reference to the deciding vote McCain cast against Republican efforts to repeal and replace Obamacare. “And nobody wants me to talk about your other senator, who’s weak on borders, weak on crime, so I won’t talk about him. Nobody wants me to talk about him. Nobody knows who the hell he is.”

A defiant Trump also revisited on Tuesday night his widely panned response to violence at a white supremacist rally in Virginia this month that left one woman dead, insisting that the media had been unfair in its coverage of his remarks. Wednesday morning, the president recalled that portion of his Tuesday night speech, writing on Twitter that “last night in Phoenix I read the things from my statements on Charlottesville that the Fake News Media didn’t cover fairly. People got it!”

In a third post, Trump once again called on Senate Republicans to change the chamber’s rules to do away with the legislative filibuster, something Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has vowed he will never do.

“If Republican Senate doesn’t get rid of the Filibuster Rule & go to a simple majority, which the Dems would do, they are just wasting time!” the president wrote.