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Corker’s Blast at Trump Has Other Republicans Nodding in Agreement Trump’s Fight with Corker Jeopardizes His Legislative Agenda
(about 3 hours later)
WASHINGTON — For nearly nine months, Senate Republicans have watched their new president with a mix of aggravation and alarm. But it took Senator Bob Corker to take those concerns public and confront President Trump with his most serious challenge from within his own party. WASHINGTON — President Trump’s latest rupture with a Republican senator has widened the schism with his own party on Capitol Hill, potentially jeopardizing the future of his legislative agenda even as he presses lawmakers to approve deep tax cuts, according to veteran Republicans and independent analysts.
In unloading on Mr. Trump, Mr. 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. The caustic exchange with Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee on Sunday came at a time when Mr. Trump can ill afford to lose the support of even one more Republican, given his repeated failures to hold together his party on high-drama votes on health care. And as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Mr. Corker has significant influence over appointments and legislation important to the White House.
Mr. Corker, chairman 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 Twitter-armed president and his allies in the conservative media. But Mr. Corker’s passionate statements reflect growing troubles for a president attempting to govern with a narrow and increasingly disenchanted Republican majority. White House officials seethed on Monday, privately accusing Mr. Corker of intentionally picking a fight with the president to draw attention to his new crusade against raising the deficit in any tax overhaul. But Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, and his allies were incredulous that the president would anger a senator just a week before a budget vote that is critical to tax cuts when the party’s 52-vote majority can be thwarted by just three defections.
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, Mr. Corker has not been one of the renegades on those high-drama votes that killed Mr. Trump’s health care legislation. By himself, Mr. 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 Mr. Trump’s challenge. “Under the normal, traditional rules of politics of the last 40 years of my life, a president would not poke a senator in the eye when he has a two-seat majority and a major legislative agenda needing to be accomplished,” said former Representative Thomas M. Reynolds, Republican of New York, who is now a lobbyist in the capital.
The White House spent Monday morning telling its allies that Mr. Corker is responsible for the fight, not Mr. Trump, and that the senator was an attention-seeking obstructionist. But few of Mr. 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 Mr. Trump’s entire agenda could be dead because Mr. Corker has a lot of friends on Capitol Hill. Another former House Republican, Tom Davis of Virginia, said the split with Mr. Corker would undermine Mr. Trump’s influence with other legislators as well. “Corker’s comments carry credibility because of his reputation as a thoughtful senator not known for shooting from the hip,” he said. “There is an old saying in politics: Don’t pick a fight with someone who has nothing to lose.”
But that does not mean other Senate Republicans will rush to the microphones to second Mr. Corker’s sentiments. In an interview with The New York Times on Sunday, Mr. Corker responded to a series of Twitter attacks on him by Mr. Trump. He said that the president was running the White House like it was “a reality show” and with bellicose threats that could set the nation “on the path to World War III.” Mr. Corker added that “every single day at the White House, it’s a situation of trying to contain him.” The feud broke into public view last week when Mr. Corker said that Mr. Trump’s advisers were guarding against “chaos.” The president retaliated on Sunday by saying the retiring senator “didn’t have the guts to run” for another term. Mr. Corker responded on Twitter an hour later, saying that the White House had become an “adult day care center.”
Other Republican lawmakers, while privately nodding their heads, remained conspicuously silent on 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 Mr. Corker’s remarks. He then unloaded in an interview with The New York Times, saying in public what many of his Republican colleagues say in private — that the president is dangerously erratic, treats his high office like “a reality show,” has to be contained by his staff and is reckless enough to put the country “on the path to World War III.”
“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. Mr. Corker, a moderate by temperament as well as ideology, had measured his occasional criticisms of Mr. Trump for months in hopes of influencing his foreign policy, but evidently feels liberated now that he has decided not to run for a third term.
Mr. Trump has grown frustrated by Senate Republicans as legislation to repeal President Barack Obama’s health care program has been repeatedly blocked, lashing out at Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the party leader, for not getting the job done. He has also engaged in open conflicts with Senators John McCain and Jeff Flake of Arizona, Lindsey O. Graham of South Carolina and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, among others. Few other incumbent Republicans rushed to the microphones to echo his comments on Monday, but several made little attempt to hide their irritation at Mr. Trump for attacking Mr. Corker.
Mr. Trump’s former chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, acting in what he says is the president’s interest, is organizing a rebellion against the Republican establishment and recruiting candidates to challenge incumbent senators in primaries next year. Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff has talked about a “purge” of Republicans who are not loyal to Mr. Trump. “He’s an important part of our team and he’s a particularly important part of the budget debate, which will be on the floor next week,” Mr. McConnell said pointedly at an event in Hazard, Ky., with Scott Pruitt, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency.
For their part, Senate Republicans have pushed back on occasion. Almost unanimously, they and their counterparts in the House passed legislation over Mr. Trump’s objections mandating sanctions on Russia and limiting the president’s ability to lift them on his own. “Bob Corker has been a leader in Congress on issues as diverse as deficit reduction and combating terrorism and he is a man of unwavering integrity,” Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, said in a statement. “If we’re going to accomplish our economic and national security agenda we’re going to have to work together, period.”
They also stood against him when he engaged in a protracted public campaign against his own attorney general, Jeff Sessions, a former colleague of theirs in the Senate, warning him that if he fired Mr. Sessions they would not confirm a successor and acting to prevent him from using his recess appointment power to install a replacement without their consent. Mr. McConnell’s associates were blunter in expressing the leadership’s frustration with the president for disrupting party unity as Republicans push for tax cuts. “This was going to be hard no matter what,” said Billy Piper, Mr. McConnell’s former chief of staff. “And he took the guy who was one of the linchpins of this and incinerated him for no reason.”
“Guys like Bob Corker, I think, have reached the point where it’s like, ‘Can we not pretend the emperor is not naked? Can we not pretend the emperor is not unstable in a way that we should’ve understood very, very clearly more than a year or two years ago?’” Charlie Sykes, a former conservative talk show host and author of “How The Right Lost Its Mind,” said on CNN on Sunday. The White House spent Monday telling allies that Mr. Corker was responsible for the fight, not Mr. Trump, and that the senator was an attention-seeking obstructionist.
As chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, Mr. Corker could single-handedly block the confirmation of a new secretary of state should Mr. Trump push out his embattled chief diplomat, Rex W. Tillerson, and he could bottle up other appointments. He would presumably play a key role in any decision on whether to tear up the Iran nuclear deal. And as a longtime deficit hawk, he could also become a challenge for Mr. Trump as the president seeks to pass deep tax cuts that would add hundreds of billions of dollars to the national debt. “I find tweets like this to be incredibly irresponsible,” Kellyanne Conway, the president’s counselor, told Fox News, referring to Mr. Corker’s posted response to Mr. Trump on Sunday. “It adds to the insulting that the mainstream media and the president’s detractors — almost a year after this election, they still can’t accept the election results. It adds to their ability and their cover to speak about the president of the United States in ways that no president should be talked about.”
Mr. Corker’s public break with the president was a long time in coming. Mr. Trump considered Mr. Corker as a candidate for secretary of state after last year’s election but was said to have told associates that the 5-foot-7 senator was too short. Mr. Corker expressed concern shortly after the inauguration that Mr. Trump was a “wrecking ball” to American foreign policy but he largely tempered his criticism in hopes of helping to steer the nation’s first president to serve without any political or military background. Vice President Mike Pence was left to defend Mr. Trump against what he called “empty rhetoric and baseless attacks,” saying the president had accomplished a lot internationally. “Today our nation once again stands without apology as leader of the free world,” Mr. Pence said in a statement. “That’s what American leadership on the world stage looks like and no amount of criticism at home can diminish those results.”
By last week, that hope was clearly gone. As Mr. Tillerson publicly denied he was considering resignation without denying that he had once called the president a “moron” — he let a spokeswoman deny it later — Mr. Corker volunteered that the secretary of state and two other officials were the only thing that “separate our country from chaos.” Mr. Trump has grown frustrated by Senate Republicans — including lashing out at Mr. McConnell for not getting the job done — as legislation to repeal President Barack Obama’s health care program has been repeatedly blocked. He has engaged in open conflicts with Senators John McCain and Jeff Flake of Arizona, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, among others, although just Monday he went golfing with Mr. Graham.
Mr. Trump responded over the weekend by calling Mr. Corker "a negative voice” who “didn’t have the guts to run” for another term. Mr. Corker fired back on Twitter by saying “the White House has become an adult day care center” and “someone obviously missed their shift.” He followed up with the Times interview. Some Republican senators share Mr. Trump’s frustration with gridlock in the Senate. “We want things to move quickly,” said Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who was elected in 2014. “People are frustrated with the lack of results.”
The White House complained that Mr. Corker had been “insulting,” as Kellyanne Conway, the president’s counselor, put it on Monday morning. “I find tweets like this to be incredibly irresponsible,” she told Fox News. “It adds to the insulting that the mainstream media and the president’s detractors — almost a year after this election they still can’t accept the election results. It adds to their ability and their cover to speak about the president of the United States in ways that no president should be talked about.” Senator David Perdue of Georgia, another member of the 2014 class, has been even more outspoken in venting about fellow Republicans derailing health care legislation. “People are very upset that Republican senators are not backing the agenda of this president,” he said.
Mr. Corker, who may have found the no-guts tweet insulting, has plenty of Republicans agreeing with his point of view. But the ones who have acknowledged that publicly are those like former Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi, the onetime Republican leader in the Senate, who when asked by Politico how Mr. Trump was doing replied, “Not great. Too many problems with disasters and Congress.” Mr. Trump’s former chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, acting in what he says is the president’s interest, is organizing a rebellion against the Republican establishment and recruiting candidates to challenge incumbent senators in primaries next year. Mr. Pence’s chief of staff has talked about a “purge” of Republicans who are not loyal to Mr. Trump.
Mr. Lott, of course, is not running again. “Do most senators have their doubts about the president?” asked John Feehery, a longtime Republican congressional aide now working as a lobbyist in Washington. “That’s probably true, but also largely irrelevant. He’s the president, and they have to find ways to get stuff done with him. Otherwise, they face the wrath of the voters — something Bob Corker no longer worries about.” That may keep more Republicans on board even if they agree with Mr. Corker.
“Do most senators have their doubts about the president?” asked John Feehery, a longtime Republican congressional aide. “That’s probably true, but also largely irrelevant. He’s the president, and they have to find ways to get stuff done with him. Otherwise, they face the wrath of the voters — something Bob Corker no longer worries about.”
In effect, Mr. McCain, Ms. Murkowski and Senator Susan Collins of Maine already were free agents on many issues. Regular defections by Mr. Corker would make the president’s ability to pass legislation that much harder, absent bipartisan deals with Democrats.
As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Mr. Corker could block the confirmation of a new secretary of state should Mr. Trump push out his embattled chief diplomat, Rex W. Tillerson. He also, presumably, would play a key role in any decision on whether to tear up the Iran nuclear deal.
“Senate Republicans’ frustrations with Trump are starting to boil over,” said Alex Conant, a former Senate Republican aide. “I’m sure the feelings are mutual inside the White House. The relationship was always tenuous at best, but Corker’s comments are a new low point.”
”If they were getting a lot done, it would be easier for everyone to get along,” Mr. Conant said. “Of course, the fact that they’re not getting along also makes it harder to get anything done.”