Corker: Trump may trigger WWIII

WASHINGTON — Sen. Bob Corker, the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, charged in an interview on Sunday that President Donald Trump was treating his office like “a reality show,” with reckless threats toward other countries that could set the nation “on the path to World War III.”

In an extraordinary rebuke of a president of his own party, Corker said he was alarmed about a president who acts “like he’s doing ‘The Apprentice’ or something.”

“He concerns me,” Corker added. “He would have to concern anyone who cares about our nation.”

Corker’s comments capped a remarkable day of sulfurous insults between the president and the Tennessee senator — a powerful, if lame-duck, lawmaker, whose support will be critical to the president on tax reform and the fate of the Iran nuclear deal.

It began Sunday morning when Trump, posting on Twitter, accused the Tennessee senator of deciding not to run for re-election because he “didn’t have the guts.” Corker shot back in his own tweet: “It’s a shame the White House has become an adult day care center. Someone obviously missed their shift this morning.”

“It’s a shame the White House has become an adult day care center. Someone obviously missed their shift this morning.”

– U.S. SEN. BOB CORKER, R-TENN.

“Senator Bob Corker ‘begged’ me to endorse him for re-election in Tennessee. I said ‘NO’ and he dropped out.” – PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP

The senator, Trump said, had “begged” for his endorsement. “I said ‘NO’ and he dropped out (said he could not win without my endorsement),” the president wrote. He also said that Corker had asked to be secretary of state. “I said ‘NO THANKS,’” he wrote.

Corker flatly disputed that account, saying Trump had urged him to run again, and promised to endorse him if he did. But the exchange laid bare a deeper rift: The senator views Trump as given to irresponsible outbursts — a political novice who has failed to make the transition from show business.

Trump poses such an acute risk, the senator said, that a coterie of senior administration officials must protect him from his own instincts. “I know for a fact that every single day at the White House, it’s a situation of trying to contain him,” Corker said in a telephone interview.

The deeply personal back-and-forth will almost certainly rupture what had been a friendship with a fellow real estate developer turned elected official, one of the few genuine relationships Trump had developed on Capitol Hill. Still, even as he leveled his stinging accusations, Corker repeatedly said Sunday that he liked Trump, until now an occasional golf partner, and wished him “no harm.”

Trump’s feud with Corker is particularly perilous given that the president has little margin for error as he tries to pass a landmark overhaul of the tax code — his best, and perhaps last, hope of producing a major legislative achievement this year.

If Senate Democrats end up unified in opposition to the promised tax bill, Trump could lose the support of only two of the Senate’s 52 Republicans to pass it. That is the same challenging math that Trump and Senate Republican leaders faced in their failed effort to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.

Corker could also play a key role if Trump follows through on his threat to “decertify” the Iran nuclear deal, kicking to Congress the issue of whether to restore sanctions on Tehran and effectively scuttle the pact.

Republicans could hold off on sanctions but use the threat of them to force Iran back to the negotiating table — a strategy being advocated by Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark. But that approach could leave the United States isolated, and it will be up to Corker to balance opposition to the deal with the wishes of those, including some of Trump’s own aides, who want to change the accord but not blow it up.

Beyond the Iran deal, Corker’s committee holds confirmation hearings on Trump’s ambassadorial appointments. If the president were to oust Rex Tillerson as secretary of state, as some expect, Corker would lead the hearings on Trump’s nominee for the post.

The senator, who is close to Tillerson, invoked comments that the president made on Twitter the previous weekend in which he appeared to undercut Tillerson’s negotiations with North Korea.

“A lot of people think that there is some kind of ‘good cop, bad cop’ act underway, but that’s just not true,” Corker said.

Without offering specifics, he said Trump had repeatedly undermined diplomacy with his Twitter fingers. “I know he has hurt, in several instances, he’s hurt us as it relates to negotiations that were underway by tweeting things out,” Corker said.

All but inviting his colleagues to join him in speaking out about the president, Corker said his concerns about Trump were shared by nearly every Senate Republican.

“Look, except for a few people, the vast majority of our caucus understands what we’re dealing with here,” he said, adding that “of course they understand the volatility that we’re dealing with and the tremendous amount of work that it takes by people around him to keep him in the middle of the road.”

As for the tweets that set off the feud on Sunday morning, Corker expressed a measure of powerlessness.

“I don’t know why the president tweets out things that are not true,” he said. “You know he does it, everyone knows he does it, but he does.”

The senator recalled four conversations this year, a mix of in-person meetings and phone calls, in which he said the president had encouraged him to run for re-election. Trump, he said, repeatedly indicated he wanted to come to Tennessee for an early rally on Corker’s behalf and even telephoned him last Monday to try to get him to reconsider his decision to retire.

“When I told him that that just wasn’t in the cards, he said, ‘You know, if you run, I’ll endorse you.’ I said, ‘Mr. President, it’s just not in the cards; I’ve already made a decision.’ So then we began talking about other candidates that were running.”

One of the most prominent establishment-aligned Republicans to develop a relationship with Trump, the senator said he did not regret standing with him during the campaign last year.

“I would compliment him on things that he did well, and I’d criticize things that were inappropriate,” he said. “So it’s been really the same all the way through.”