Former Sen. Gordon Humphrey, a GOP convention delegate from New Hampshire this year, had some particularly evocative language Monday to describe supporters of Donald Trump.

“I sought to be recognized to raise a point of parliamentary inquiry and was immediately drowned out by people I would refer to as brownshirts,” Humphrey told MSNBC reporter Jacob Soboroff amid a raucous, long-shot effort by anti-Trump Republicans to block the presumptive nominee.

“This is pretty shocking and shameful. I’ve seen a lot, but this is not a meeting of the Republican National Committee. This is a meeting of brownshirts,” he later added, likening the GOP convention leaders to the paramilitary wing of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party.


Humphrey—a New Hampshire senator from 1979 to 1990—had submitted a petition from state delegates to force a roll call vote on the proposed convention rules, with the ultimate hope of changing the rules to allow delegates to cast their vote regardless of how their state voted.

As Politico reported, the roll call was rejected following two voice votes, blocking the last-ditch attempt—but not without vocal protest from delegates on the convention hall floor in Cleveland’s Quicken Loans Arena.

Delegates chant for a roll call vote at the #gopconvention pic.twitter.com/gLamluzipy — POLITICO (@politico) July 18, 2016

Humphrey was also displeased.

Asked what he meant by the term brown shirts, the former senator and Trump critic said, “people who act like fascists.”

“They might not be fascists, but they act like fascists,” he told Soboroff. “They have the manners, or the lack of manners, of fascists. And in this respect they are only too reflective of Donald Trump himself.”

According to Politico, Arkansas Rep. Steve Womack, the presiding convention official, announced that three of the nine states that had signed on to Humphrey’s petition had withdrawn their support, “leaving the Trump critics short of the signatures they needed to force the vote” and allowing officials to move on.

Soboroff concluded the interview Monday, the opening day of the convention, by asking Humphrey if he had a message for the presumptive nominee.


“Never Trump,” he said.