Following Harry Reid's announcement that he was not going to run for reelection in 2016, Charles Krauthammer appeared on Fox News to give his assessment of Reid's legacy.

While Reid in his video announcement portrayed his own tenure as the embodiment of the selfless servitude of the masses, Krauthammer’s take on Reid’s reign was, well, less than flattering. Calling Reid a "disgrace to his own institution," Krauthammer said the recently dethroned Senate Majority Leader had "emasculated" his institution in his attempts to protect the president and Democrats seeking re-election:

KRAUTHAMMER: Harry, we hardly knew ye and what we did know, we didn't like.

Now, I know you're not supposed to dance on the grave of the newly dead but this is only a politically death, so those rules don't apply and I will be unrestrained. I'm not against the fact that he was a partisan with sharp elbows and all that, but I do think he was a disgrace to his own institution because he emasculated it in the name of protecting the president and trying to re-elect Democrats.

He didn't succeed because he essentially shutdown the Senate as soon as Republicans took the House in 2010. He failed as a partisan because nine Senators of his party lost reelection. But he succeeded in protecting the president from having to exercise the veto and in order to achieve that, he killed his own institution.

In a video announcement Friday, Reid explained that his serious injuries earlier this year gave him "a little down time" to step back and assess his future. Saying he did not want to be "soaking up" much needed campaign funds in 2016, Reid announced that he had decided to go out "at the top of my game" and call it a day. Soon after Reid's announcement, the Republican Senatorial Committee responded by suggesting he was retiring because he was "on the verge" of losing reelection and describing him as now "instantly" "irrelevant."

Transcript, video via RCP. This article has been updated.