Corker says Trump risks ‘World War III’
In a war of words, senator says White House has become ‘adult day care center’
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.”
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 Corker 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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.”