Cornyn speaks
Senator says Trump “let his guard down” on the coronavirus.
WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. John Cornyn said Monday that President Donald Trump “let his guard down” on the coronavirus and that the president’s rhetoric has created “confusion” as the country has struggled to get the pandemic under control.
“I think he let his guard down, and I think in his desire to try to demonstrate that we are somehow coming out of this and that the danger is not still with us — I think he got out over his skis and frankly, I think it’s a lesson to all of us that we need to exercise self discipline,” Cornyn told the Houston Chronicle editorial board.
The comment came as he was asked about Trump rarely wearing a mask, holding Make America Great Again rallies and hosting a Supreme Court nomination ceremony at the WhiteHouse attended by at least eight people, including two senators, who have since tested positive for the virus.
Cornyn also said the president “should’ve known” that comments he made to journalist Bob Woodward about downplaying the virus in his public statements would be published. He said that while he believes Trump’s policy actions — including shutting off travel to and from China and supporting stimulus packages worth trillions of dollars — “demonstrated the seriousness of the virus,” the president’s rhetoric at times “creates confusion.”
“He tries to balance that with saying, ‘Well you know, we got this.’ And clearly we don’t have this,” Cornyn said. “I think the biggest mistake people make in public life is not telling the truth, particularly in something with as much public interest as here because you know the real story is going to come out.”
It was some of the veteran Texas senator’s strongest criticism of a president whom he called “his own worst enemy.”
Cornyn is running for a fourth term in office and has been among Trump’s closest allies in the Senate. His opponent, former Air Force pilot MJ Hegar, has accused Cornyn of not taking the coronavirus seriously enough and doing little to push back on the president.
“Personally, I’d like to see you and the president condemn white supremacists,” Hegar tweeted last week. “Will you ever hold the president accountable?”
OnMonday, she tweeted: “This isn’t @JohnCornyn holding the president to account, It’s @JohnCornyn terrified about reelection.”
Cornyn said Trump’s policies have largely been good for the country. But he said “it is not easy to try to get things done working with him or the White House,” and he detailed some of the private disagreements he has had with Trump.
Discord over ‘Dreamers’
Cornyn said about a year ago he called Trump and told the president he no longer believed that protections for some immigrants brought to the country illegally as children should be “used as leverage to try to get other things we want on immigration.”
Cornyn said he “no longer felt comfortable” tying an extension to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program to the other policies.
“I no longer believed it was moral, really, to use these young people who did nothing wrong,” Cornyn said. He said he made the same appeals to Jared Kushner, the president’s son in law and adviser, but “unfortunately … my view did not prevail.”
In the past, those protections, which were put in place by the Obama administration and scrapped by Trump, have been lumped into broader immigration bills with funding for the president’s border wall and other Republican immigration priorities.
Critics have questioned Cornyn’s commitment to passing legislation to protect so-called Dreamers, pointing out that he was a critic of the Obamaadministration’s creation of the DACA program and said Trump was right to end it in 2017, saying at the time that Congress should act on the matter.
Cornyn voted against standalone DACA bills in 2007 and 2010. In 2018 — as Republican whip, responsible for rounding up votes for legislation — Cornyn said any citizenship concessions would require cuts to family migration and the diversity visa lottery.
“The president would like to get a result here, but he also has demands,” Cornyn said at the time. “The idea that you’re going to be able to get a clean DACA bill, or one that just tips their hat at these other two pillars of what the president insisted upon, I think is not a path forward.”
But on Monday, Cornyn — whose campaign has run Spanish language ads saying he “strongly supports the legalization of Dreamers” — said he believes a standalone DACA bill has enough support to pass, if the president would get behind it.
“I just don’t see, in this political environment, getting an immigration reform bill of any kind unless the president gets in front of it,” Cornyn said. “I don’t have the authority to put it on the floor.”
“If the president would get behind it, it would provide political cover for a lot of people,” Cornyn said. “I think if it was on the floor, it would pass the Senate and it would pass the House and if the president would sign it, that would be a very important accomplishment.”
Frank Sharry, a longtime advocate for DACA with the immigrant rights groupAmerica’s Voice, said Cornyn calling Trump about DACA is “literally unbelievable.” He noted that a version of the Dream Act passed the Democratic-led House last year and Cornyn could push Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to bring it to the floor for a vote.
What he says, what he does
“He talks a good game about the need for a humane approach for young people,” Sharry said. “There is a canyon-size gap between what he says and what he does.”
Cornyn said such disagreements with the president have mostly been addressed directly to Trump and members of his administration, because he “made a decision to not get in public fights with the president when I disagree with him.”
He pointed to former U.S. Sen. Bob Corker, a Tennessee Republican, who retired in 2018 after developing a public feud with the president that included Corker calling the White House an “adult day care center” and Trump labeling the senator “Liddle Bob Corker.”
“By getting involved in a public dispute with the president over what he says and how he says it, basically Bob was persona non grata and it completely defeated his effectiveness in getting things done,” Cornyn said. “I think the most important thing I can do is to get things done for Texas. I just have to deal with the personalities and some of the side showas a distraction from getting things done.”
Cornyn, however, made the case that Trump’s policies, especially on the economy, have been good for the country and “if you’re asking me to choose between the policies of a Biden presidency with the pressure he’ll get from the left of his own party … I would vote for the president and his policies.”
“The American people elected him and that’s the ultimate test,” Cornyn said. “And we’ll see what happens on Nov. 3.”