Former Democratic presidential candidate defends Trump against media 'onslaught'

Et tu, Lincoln Chafee?

On Tuesday, the former Democratic presidential candidate defended President Trump in his battle against the “mainstream media.”

“Mainstream media is just a full onslaught against him, and I think it’s kind of tiresome,” Chafee said during an interview with Rhode Island radio station WPRO. “He won. I didn’t vote for him, but he won. Let’s let him get his feet under him and build an administration and move on.”

How would Chafee, whose own 2016 presidential bid was considered a long shot, know? Two words: metric system. When he announced his candidacy, the politician mentioned pushing for the United States to adopt the metric system as a way to improve global relations.

Chafee said the media “immediately went to trivial things like metric.”

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He also complained of the limited time he was allotted during the Democratic primary debates and that he was never invited on Sunday morning news shows.

Chafee’s comments come just days after the president declared that the media, including the New York Times, NBC, ABC, CBS and CNN, were the “enemy of the American people.”

Read more:

Trump declares 'fake news' media 'the enemy of the American people'

And while he disagrees with “probably 99.9 percent” of Trump’s proposals, the former Rhode Island governor commended the president for how he is handling Russia.

“When you’re as strong as we are… you can take some risks, and we should be taking them with our perceived adversaries,” Chaffee said.

Chafee, who served as Republican senator for Rhode Island before being elected as the state's independent governor and then switching to the Democratic party, did note that he voted for Bernie Sanders in Rhode Island’s Democratic primary and Hillary Clinton in the general election.

Listen to Chafee’s interview here.