Reid said that he fears for the treatment of Latinos, African Americans, gay people, Muslims and young girls under a President Trump. | Getty Reid: Trump a 'sexual predator who lost the popular vote' The retiring Senate minority leader unloads.

President Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi — all of them offered conciliatory statements about Donald Trump's election victory.

Then there was Harry Reid.


In a blistering statement Friday, the retiring Senate minority leader attacked the president-elect as a "sexual predator who lost the popular vote and fueled his campaign with bigotry and hate" and said that he fears for the treatment of Latinos, African-Americans, gay people, Muslims and young girls under a President Trump. He also criticized the media for covering the transition to Trump as normal, even as Obama and Trump had a civil meeting on Thursday and Schumer, the incoming Democratic leader, spoke with Trump on Wednesday.

“We as a nation must find a way to move forward without consigning those who Trump has threatened to the shadows. Their fear is entirely rational, because Donald Trump has talked openly about doing terrible things to them," Reid said. "Every news piece that breathlessly obsesses over inauguration preparations compounds their fear by normalizing a man who has threatened to tear families apart, who has bragged about sexually assaulting women and who has directed crowds of thousands to intimidate reporters and assault African-Americans. Their fear is legitimate and we must refuse to let it fall through the cracks between the fluff pieces."

Reid hasn't talked to Trump, and Trump has made no effort to contact him, an aide said.

"He will have his say" about Trump during the transition, the aide said.

Reid was perhaps the loudest and most forceful critic of Trump — and Republicans who, Reid said, paved the way for the New York mogul to win the nomination — this year. Reid blamed Trump's rise on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for a deliberate strategy of obstructionism as long as Obama was president. And just days before the election, Reid accused the FBI of aiding Trump by withholding information about Russian interference in the election.

In an interview the day before the election, Reid blasted Rudy Giuliani as a "wanna-be something" and again attacked the GOP for enabling Trump's rise.

"We have Trump because of what the Republicans have done in Congress the last 10 years. And I think we’ve been able to show that. I think we’ve done a good job of showing that," said Reid, who used the Senate floor to wage war against Trump on a daily basis.

More than almost any other Democrat in Congress, he has little reason to speak hopefully of working with Trump. Reid is retiring in the new year and his home state of Nevada went almost entirely blue on Tuesday evening, with Reid's political machine helping elect Catherine Cortez Masto, the first Latina senator in U.S. history, to replace him.

Now Reid says that, since Trump "has emboldened the forces of hate and bigotry in America," the onus is on the president-elect to change that.

"Winning the electoral college does not absolve Trump of the grave sins he committed against millions of Americans. Donald Trump may not possess the capacity to assuage those fears, but he owes it to this nation to try," Reid said. “If Trump wants to roll back tide of hate he unleashed, he has a tremendous amount of work to do and he must begin immediately.”