Corker’s blast at Trump has other Republicans nodding
WASHINGTON — For nearly nine months, Senate Republicans have watched their new president with a mix of aggravation and alarm. But it took Sen. Bob Corker to take those concerns public and confront President Donald Trump with his most serious challenge from within his own party.
In unloading on Trump, Corker, a two-term senator from Tennessee, said in public what many of his Republican colleagues say in private — that the president is dangerously erratic and unstable, that he treats his high post like a television show and that he is reckless enough to stumble the country into a nuclear war.
Corker, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, evidently feels liberated now that he has decided not to run for re-election, while other Republican senators with concerns keep quiet fearing the retaliation of a Twitterarmed president and his allies in the conservative media. But Corker’s passionate statements reflect growing troubles for a president attempting to govern with a narrow and increasingly disenchanted Republican majority.
The president has already seen what can happen with a 52-vote Senate caucus that can be thwarted by the defection of just three Republicans. Until now, Corker has not been one of the renegades on those high-drama votes that killed Trump’s health-care legislation. By himself, Corker could make it that much harder for the president to hold a fragile majority on upcoming votes on taxes, among other priorities — and if he emboldens other Republican doubters, it could add to Trump’s challenge.
The White House spent Monday morning telling its allies that Corker is responsible for the fight, not Trump, and that the senator was an attentionseeking obstructionist. But few of Trump’s allies accepted that narrative. One close associate of the president, who asked not to be identified to discuss the situation more candidly, said Trump’s entire agenda could be dead because Corker has a lot of friends on Capitol Hill.
But that does not mean other Senate Republicans will rush to the microphones to second Corker’s sentiments. In an interview with The New York Times on Sunday, Corker responded to a series of Twitter attacks on him by Trump. He said that the president was running the White House as if it was “a reality show” and with bellicose threats that could set the nation “on the path to World War Three.” Corker added that “every single day at the White House, it’s a situation of trying to contain him.”
Other Republican lawmakers, while privately nodding their heads, remained conspicuously silent Monday morning, and many Senate Republicans no doubt were relieved not to be in session this week in Washington, where they would be intercepted in the hallways of the Capitol by reporters asking them to comment on Corker’s remarks.
“While it may really bother other Senate Republicans and it’s unnerving that one of their own is being attacked, most aren’t retiring and know they must still work with the White House in order to accomplish legislative goals like tax reform or eventually answer to frustrated voters,” said Ron Bonjean, a former top aide to Senate Republican leaders.
Charlie Sykes, a former conservative talk show host, told CNN on Sunday: “Guys like Bob Corker, I think, have reached the point where it’s like, ‘Can we not pretend the emperor is not naked?’”
Corker could play a key role in any decision to tear up the Iran nuclear deal. And as a deficit hawk, he could also become a challenge for Trump as he tries to pass deep tax cuts.