Perino: Reid ‘absolutely poisonous’

Dana Perino, the White House press secretary under President George W. Bush, on Tuesday excoriated Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), calling him “poisonous.”

“He’s an absolutely poisonous figure in Washington, D.C., he’s been a disaster for the country,” she said on the Hugh Hewitt Show.

{mosads}“I think a lot of the dysfunction in Washington can be traced directly to his doorstep.”

The criticism came after Hewitt asked Perino to respond to Reid’s condemnation of her former boss.

Reid quoted a New York Daily News column by Mike Lupica that noted that Republican White House hopeful and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush backed the nomination of Loretta Lynch as attorney general. Reid then quoted from a section of Lupica’s column that attacked George W Bush.

“Bush didn’t just show grace in doing that, he also showed more common sense than his brother showed in eight years as president of the United States,” Reid said, quoting from Lupica’s column, on the Senate floor on Tuesday.

That drew the ire of Perino, who came to the defense of her boss. She said that Reid’s impending retirement is “very good for this country, for the world, and especially for the Democrats.”

“I’ve never seen anything so abhorrent in my entire life as Harry Reid,” she said.

This story was corrected at 9:48 a.m.