Former Kansas Gov. Bill Graves, a Republican, has become increasingly critical of President Donald Trump and the Republicans he says continue to enable him. His remarks combined criticism of Trump’s election claims with a warning about how his own party is handling power in Washington.

“The Republican Party to me today feels like sort of a bad frat party,” Graves said on Thursday night’s edition of Erin Burnett OutFront. “Everybody sort of just full of this joy and enthusiasm about how great things are going. And they're not really grasping the struggles that are going on every day for everyday Americans.”

“I don't recognize this Republican Party,” Graves added. “I'm still a Republican, and I intend to stay one. But I'm hoping the Republican Party trends back more towards me than further away from me.”

Graves said he was troubled by what he described as “corruption and ineptitude” from the White House. He also argued that the Republican Party was failing to uphold the separation and balance of powers that had helped make the United States a functional democracy for so long.

“I've got a tremendous respect for the balance of powers in our in our nation. And right now, the Republicans in Congress have simply given away, have walked away from their responsibility to be the check and balance against this executive branch. And that is wrong. And it needs to be rectified.”

In his framing, the failure lies with Congress as much as with the president — a distinction that turns his critique from a personal grievance into an argument about institutional roles.

Graves served two terms as Kansas’ Republican secretary of state and also served as governor. He worked as a poll worker during the 2020 presidential election, which Trump claims he won despite evidence that Joe Biden was the victor. That résumé is central to his argument: Graves is a former state election official who volunteered at the polls himself, a vantage point he used to push back on Trump’s characterization of the system.

Graves said he is alarmed by Trump’s continued assertion that the 2020 election was “rigged.” He also expressed anger over Trump’s discussion of placing federal agents at polling sites and obtaining voter data.

Burnett noted that “no one even knows whether Trump believes his own lies about the election.” She also pointed out that Trump has called mail-in voting “cheating,” even though Trump himself votes by mail.

Graves said he worked alongside 49 other state election officials, both Republicans and Democrats, each of whom worked with “hundreds, if not thousands of county clerks.”

“Do you know who were administering elections at the local level? The volunteers,” Graves said. “And what the president says in all those instances is such a disservice to all the people who work so hard to make sure we have free and fair elections in this country. And I wanted to see for myself, so I did volunteer and work for two and a half weeks in advance voting, and it is a remarkable system. I'm proud of the people that I worked with.”

His account, by his description, is of an election system built on layers of state officials, county clerks, and volunteer poll workers — the same people he says absorb the damage each time the “rigged” claim is repeated.

Graves said the president’s comments repeatedly harm both election workers and the electoral process.

“The president, every time he talks, does a great disservice to all those people and to our process. And the fact is, he lost fair and square, and the fact that he can't man up and accept it is just beyond hard to imagine — that a president of the United States could be in that frame of mind.”

With Trump continuing to press his claims and Graves insisting he intends to stay in a party he says he no longer recognizes, the disagreement he described remains unresolved.

The interview is available on YouTube. The original report was published by Alternet.