If Trump was is in a real adult day care center we’d all be much better off.

December 24, 2018December 24, 2018

HuffPost and others tell us that

Twitter Flips For Bob Corker’s ‘Alert The Daycare Staff’ Hashtag For Trump

Sen. Bob Corker, the Republican chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, on Sunday called the White House “an adult day care center” after President Trump attacked him in a morning Twitter tirade.

Setting off an extraordinary squabble between two leaders of the same party, Trump alleged in a trio of tweets that Corker “begged” him for his endorsement, did not receive it and decided to retire because he “didn’t have the guts” to run for reelection next year.

In response, Corker (Tenn.) tweeted, “It’s a shame the White House has become an adult day care center. Someone obviously missed their shift this morning.”

I get his point. However, he uses this expression in a demeaning way to those who need such care and he shows a total lack of understanding of real day programs for adults. Then again, even though he is attacking Trump, he is a Republican and I’ve come to expect such insensitivity from them.

Unfortunately we would be far better off if Trump was in an actual adult day care center. I know. I used to be in charge of one of them, one which in fact was considered by many in the Michigan mental health community to be a trailblazing day treatment program for adults who had once been hospitalized for severe chronic psychiatric disorders.

I described the Mason Mental Health Center Day Treatment Program as follows in a website which was achived after the primary site went offline:

The program’s co-ordinator, Linda Ward came on board and developed a humanistic program where the emphasis was on relating to the clients with empathy and warmth, while working with them to establish mutually acceptable and realistic goals. Staff was always willing to reach out to clients during times of crisis and physically go to where the clients needed them to be, whether it be a group home or the public library where one of them might be having a panic attack.

Because the town of Mason, Michigan was uniquely accepting of our clients, many of whom lived in group homes there, a hallmark of the program was its success in involving our clients in community life. Jackie Lawrence deserves much of the credit for this. She began working for the program as a secretary, but before long it became obvious that the clients were drawn to her and vice versa. She had an extraordinary knack for outreach, politics, and community relations. As soon as we had a vacancy, I hired her as a mental health worker and she has been an energetic anchor for the rural aftercare program in Ingham County ever since. (All the therapists have retired or moved on to other jobs since I wrote this.)

Photo: Mason Mental Health Day Treatment program, as befitting a rural program,
had a large vegetable garden. They not only sold fresh produce to local supermarkets;
but donated vegetable to the local food bank. The staff pictured are Steve Polzin holding a watermelon, Barb White in the lavender blouse, and coordinator Linda Ward, seated in front. To protect confidentiality, client’s faces have been covered with cutouts from a magazine because at the time I didn’t have Photoshop software.

When the program closed due to budget cuts, I moved to run another mental health center in Clinton County, and Ms. Ward move the program to a small house in Mason, Michigan and renamed it the Rural Outreach Program where it became a kind of drop-in clubhouse for the same clients. It continued to have great success in improving the lives of clients assuring that few if any had crises which required hospitalization.

They hired Dr. David Picone as their psychiatrist who continued the humanistic approach to relating to clients as people not defined by their diagnosis. Unlike most psychiatrists who do medication clients seeing them for short sessions to look for side effects and compensation, he met with all the clients in a group for an hour or more. He got to know them as human beings and could observe how they functioned with each other and the staff.

Only then would he meet with each of them individually to review their medication.

My sister was an art therapist and worked in a large program for developmentally disabled children and adults. This program was also highly regarded and in fact to be honest there was a certain amount of chaos there, but it was quickly and compassionately dealt with by the staff.

I also know something about memory care programs since the Continuing Care Retirement Community where I live has a nationally top rated one. There dedicated staff and supervisors assure that rarely if ever could the term chaotic be used to describe what life is like there.

While Corker’s Tweet is bound to get under Trump’s skin, I wish he had found another way to express his observation that Trump was unhinged and needed professional supervision.

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Trump dump: Growing list of ‘forgotten Republicans’

August 18, 2018August 18, 2018

Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (AP Photo/Steve Karnowski, File)

The ranks of forgotten Republicans are growing.

Some were forced out, such as Tim Pawlenty, a former two-term Minnesota governor who lost this week’s bid for a political comeback. Some, such as the retiring Republican Sen. Bob Corker, chose to leave on their own. Others still serve, but with a muted voice.

Whether members of Congress, governors or state party leaders, they are struggling to fit into President Donald Trump’s Republican Party.

The expanding list of marginalized GOP leaders underscores how thoroughly Trump has dominated — and changed — the Republican Party in the nearly two years since he seized the presidency. The overwhelming majority of elected officials, candidates and rank-and-file voters now follow the president with extraordinary loyalty, even if he strays far from the values and traditions many know and love.

The Republicans left behind are warning their party with increasing urgency, though it’s unclear whether anyone’s listening.

“I hope this is a very temporary place for the Republican Party,” said Corker. “I hope that very soon we will return to our roots as a party that’s very different, especially in tone, from we’ve seen coming out of the White House.”

The forgotten Republicans — people like former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake, South Carolina Rep. Mark Sanford and Ohio Gov. John Kasich — have been unwilling to sit quietly as Trump steers the GOP away from free trade, fiscal responsibility, consistent foreign policy and civility.

Isolation and political exile have been their rewards.

Their diminished roles leave fewer Republican leaders willing to challenge Trump under any circumstances, even in his darkest moments.

Fact checkers have recorded an extraordinary level of false and misleading statements flowing out of the White House. And beyond dishonesty, some of the forgotten have decried a disturbing pattern of racially charged rhetoric on issues like immigration, NFL anthem protests and Confederate monuments.

“White nationalism isn’t something I’m ever going to be comfortable with. But it is embraced by, or simply doesn’t bother, a lot of Republicans,” said former Ohio Republican Party chairman Matt Borges, once a Trump confidant who was forced from his leadership post after criticizing Trump in the weeks leading up to the 2016 election.

After Trump’s victory, Borges returned to practicing law, while he continues to play a modest role in local politics.

“To me, it became a matter of how much of your soul are you willing to sell. I would be the wrong person to be leading this party right now,” Borges said.

Trump remains popular among rank-and-file Republicans. And the vast majority of Republican candidates across the country this midterm season are pledging unconditional loyalty — and being rewarded with primary victories.

Gallup found that 82 percent of Republicans approved of the president’s job performance earlier this month. That’s compared to just 34 percent of independents and 7 percent of Democrats.

Kasich, who has not ruled out a primary bid against Trump in 2020, said the president’s approval is misleading because the universe of people identifying as Republican is shrinking.

“We’re dealing with a remnant of the Republican Party. The party is not what it was,” Kasich said in an interview.

The term-limited governor said he’s content to focus quietly on addressing issues like the opioid epidemic and urban violence on a bipartisan basis while the Trump-led GOP focuses on partisan squabbling.

“Let those in the Republican Party who want to be ideological and partisan, let them wallow in their own failures,” said Kasich.

Other GOP leaders aren’t feeling quite so emboldened.

Pawlenty’s quest for a third term collapsed after Republican primary voters determined his experience — and his years-old description of Trump as “unfit and unhinged” — weren’t welcome.

Pawlenty politely declined to be interviewed, but a former aide, Alex Conant, said this week’s result, like other primary elections this year, sent a clear message about the modern GOP.

“There’s not a lot of room for dissent in the Republican Party right now,” Conant said. “Moderates don’t feel welcome. And if you’re not loyal to Trump, there’s not necessarily room for you.”

The details may be different, but Pawlenty’s unexpected exit is reminiscent of other public officials who have struggled to find their footing in the Trump era.

Bush, another Trump critic, declined to comment for this story. He has been forced into silence, at least in part, for fear of hurting his son’s political career. In June, Donald Trump Jr. withdrew from a fundraiser for Texas land commissioner George P. Bush after Jeb Bush criticized the president’s policy of separating immigrant children from their families at the border.

Another periodic Trump critic, former House Speaker John Boehner, is in the midst of a 20-stop bus tour to help raise money for vulnerable House Republicans.

Just don’t ask whom he’s raising money for.

Spokesman David Schnittger said it was up to each of the campaigns involved to disclose Boehner’s help. “I’m not sure anyone has exercised that option to date,” he said.

Boehner’s successor, Paul Ryan, has seen his once sky-high career prospects flounder in the Trump era. The 2012 GOP vice presidential nominee has occasionally criticized Trump, but he is retiring at the end of the year.

In South Carolina, Republican Congressman Mark Sanford narrowly lost his June primary hours after Trump tweeted he had been “very unhelpful” and highlighted the congressman’s extramarital affair.

Days later, Sanford described Trumpism as “a cancerous growth.” As he prepares to leave Congress, he’s warning the GOP the cancer is spreading.

“We have a president that will tell numerous dis-truths in the course of a day, yet that’s not challenged,” Sanford said in an interview. “What’s cancerous here is in an open political system, there has to be some measure of objective truth.”

“I’m baffled by the way so many people have looked the other way,” he said.

Asked whether he feels like he fits in today’s GOP, Sanford said simply, “No.”

Back in Ohio, Borges vowed that his departure from politics was only temporary.

“The Trump phenomenon is going to end at some point in time. That might be six years, that might be two years, that might be sooner. No one knows,” the former Ohio GOP chairman said. “When it does end, it’s the job of a lot of us … to make sure that the party is still populated by good, honest, decent candidates and officeholders who we can continue to be proud of.”

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AP Congressional Correspondent Lisa Mascaro in Washington contributed to this report.

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Will Trump kill off the Grand Old Party?

October 25, 2017October 25, 2017

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., leaves a meeting with President Donald Trump on his tax reform agenda. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Can the traditional Republican Party survive the presidency of Donald Trump?

That existential question, which has nagged at Republicans since Trump’s stunning election one year ago, flared up anew Tuesday with Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake’s announcement that he is retiring from Congress. One of the GOP’s most consistent critics of the president, Flake was facing a tough primary challenge in next year’s election from at least one candidate with the backing of some Trump allies.

“There may not be a place for a Republican like me in the current Republican climate or the current Republican Party,” said Flake, a conservative who has worked with Democrats on issues like immigration and the Obama administration’s detente with Cuba.

The senator’s dour assessment of his future in the Republican Party gave voice to worries that have gripped the GOP heading into the midterm elections. Trump has shown little loyalty to some sitting senators, and has openly squabbled with Flake and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Some of the president’s ardent supporters — led by former White House senior adviser Steve Bannon — are actively courting GOP primary challengers who are more willing to buck the Republican establishment in Washington than line up behind its leaders.

Andy Surabian, a senior adviser for the pro-Trump group Great America Alliance, said Flake’s retirement is part of a trend and “should serve as another warning shot to the failed Republican establishment that backed Flake and others like them that their time is up.”

To be sure, intra-party divisions are hardly new for the GOP, which has struggled for years to reconcile its more moderate, pro-business wing with the growing crop of populists and nationalists that ultimately fueled Trump’s political rise. Trump’s election may have left Republicans with control of both the White House and Congress but it did nothing to heal the divisions. If anything, Trump — a former Democrat with no ideological mooring to conservative principles or deep ties to GOP leaders — has exacerbated the gulf between millions of GOP voters and the congressional leaders sent to Washington to represent them.

Peter Wehner, a Trump critic who served in President George W. Bush’s White House, said there’s a “struggle going on for the soul of conservatism and the Republican Party.” He urged more traditional Republicans to stay and fight for their principles instead of fleeing — though he left open the prospect that it’s a fight they ultimately may not win.

“If this party is defined by Donald Trump and Steve Bannon, then a lot of these people aren’t going to want to be a part of that party anyway,” Wehner said.

The anti-establishment forces already had one victory under their belt after firebrand jurist Roy Moore defeated incumbent Sen. Luther Strange in the Alabama GOP primary last month. Moore is considered an outlier among Republicans and hardly a guaranteed vote for McConnell if he lands in the Senate next year.

Flake’s comments Tuesday from the Senate floor came hours after Sen. Bob Corker, a Tennessee Republican who has also decided not to seek re-election, declared Trump was “debasing” the United States with untruths and name-calling. Last week, Sen. John McCain lamented a climate of “half-baked, spurious nationalism” and Bush bemoaned “bullying and prejudice in our public life” — comments that appeared to be veiled criticism of Trump, though neither man mentioned the president by name.

Privately, many more Republican officials have raised deep concerns about the direction Trump is pulling the party, both on policy and tone. He’s pulled the GOP to the right on immigration only to raise the prospect of making a deal with Democrats to allow young people brought to the U.S. illegally as children to stay in the country. He’s withdrawn the U.S. from a major Pacific Rim trade pact and threatened to pull out of a long-standing deal with Canada and Mexico. The president has also drawn open support from some white nationalists, a reality that was magnified after he equivocated in his response to clashes between white supremacists and counter-protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, this summer.

But aside from occasional criticism of Trump’s tweets or most callous comments, most Republican office holders have stayed silent, in part out of fear of alienating the president’s supporters. A handful of House Republicans have taken the same path as Flake and Corker, announcing plans to retire rather than run for re-election in competitive districts.

Trent Lott, the former Republican Senate majority leader from Mississippi, blamed much of the GOP discontent on the fact that even with a Republican in the White House, the party has been unable to make good on its promises to voters. Efforts to repeal “Obamacare” have failed in embarrassing fashion. Many see the current debate over a tax overhaul package as their last best chance for a legislative breakthrough before the midterms and predict sweeping losses for the GOP if a bill doesn’t pass.

But Lott, too, said the solution for conservatives is to stay in Trump’s Republican Party, not walk away,

“You don’t complain that there’s not room for you in your party, you make room,” he said.

Follow Julie Pace at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC

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Republicans at war with themselves

October 25, 2017October 25, 2017

Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

A pair of senators from President Donald Trump’s own Republican Party blistered him with criticism Tuesday in a dramatic day of denunciation that laid bare a GOP at war with itself. Jeff Flake of Arizona declared he would not be “complicit” with Trump and announced his surprise retirement, while Bob Corker of Tennessee declared the president “debases our nation” with constant untruths and name-calling.

Corker, too, is retiring at the end of his term, and the White House shed no tears at the prospect of the two GOP senators’ departures. A former adviser to Steve Bannon, Trump’s ex-strategic adviser, called it all “a monumental victory for the Trump movement,” and Trump himself boasted to staff members that he’d played a role in forcing the senators out.

It was a stunning rebuke of a sitting president from prominent members of his own party — and added to a chorus of criticism of Trump that has been growing louder and more public. Flake challenged his fellow senators to follow his lead, but there were few immediate signs they would.

At midafternoon, as fellow lawmakers sat in attentive silence, Flake stood at his Senate desk and delivered an emotional speech in which he dissected what he considered his party’s accommodations with Trump and said he could no longer play a role in them.

“We were not made great as a country by indulging in or even exalting our worst impulses, turning against ourselves, glorifying in the things that divide us and calling fake things true and true things fake,” he said.

Hours earlier, Corker leveled his own searing criticism of Trump in a series of interviews.

“I think the debasement of our nation will be what he’ll be remembered most for and that’s regretful,” Corker said.

A furious Trump didn’t let that pass unremarked. On Twitter, he called Corker “incompetent,” said he “doesn’t have a clue” and claimed the two-term lawmaker “couldn’t get elected dog catcher in Tennessee.”

An overstatement to be sure, but White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in regard to the impending retirements, “The people both in Tennessee and Arizona supported this president, and I don’t think that the numbers are in the favor of either of those two senators in their states and so I think this was probably the right decision.”

Away from the cameras, Trump took credit for helping force the two departures, according to a White House official and an outside adviser, who insisted on anonymity to discuss private conversations.

Until Tuesday, Flake had insisted he had no plans to retire. He was raising money at a good rate and casting his re-election campaign as a test case of conservatism against Trumpism. But he made clear Tuesday he’d concluded that, for now at least, Trumpism had prevailed.

“It is clear at this moment that a traditional conservative who believes in limited government and free markets, who is devoted to free trade, who is pro-immigration, has a narrower and narrower path to nomination in the Republican Party,” he said.

Corker’s retirement plans also underscore the question of what the Republican Party will look like in years to come. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has warned that some candidates running with the backing of Trump allies could not win general elections. And even if they make it to the Senate, certain conservatives could make McConnell’s job even harder as he tries to maneuver legislation through a narrow majority that now stands at 52-48.

Steven Law, head of a McConnell-allied super PAC that supports GOP incumbents and establishment-aligned candidates, wasted no time issuing a statement declaring that Republican former state Sen. Kelli Ward, who was running against Flake with the encouragement of former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, “will not be the Republican nominee for this Senate seat in 2018.” Many fellow Republicans had expected Flake to lose the primary and hope they will now be able to recruit a stronger candidate.

There was celebration in the Bannon anti-establishment camp. Said Andy Surabian, former Bannon adviser and now senior adviser to the Great America Alliance “Today’s announcement from Sen. Flake that he would not run for re-election is a monumental win for the entire Trump movement and should serve as another warning shot to the failed Republican establishment that backed Flake and others like them that their time is up.”

Talking principle rather than politics, Flake said on the Senate floor, “We must be unafraid to stand up and speak out as if our country depends on it, because it does. I plan to spend the remaining 14 months of my Senate term doing just that.”

Earlier Corker had said of Trump, “His governing model is to divide and to attempt to bully and to use untruths.” He said that he and others in the party had attempted to intervene with Trump over the months, sometimes at the behest of White House officials, but “he’s obviously not going to rise to the occasion as president.”

“Unfortunately I think world leaders are very aware that much of what he says is untrue,” Corker said.
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Two more Trump lies about Corker

October 25, 2017October 25, 2017

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, R-Tenn., pauses while riding the Senate subway to the Capitol. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

President Donald Trump and Republican Sen. Bob Corker are lobbing insults at each other again. The slings and arrows are largely a matter of opinion — is Trump “debasing” the nation as Corker says? Is the senator “incompetent” and a “lightweight,” as the president tweeted?

But aside from those negative reviews of each other, Trump, in particular, got a couple of facts wrong.

TRUMP tweets Tuesday: “Bob Corker, who helped President O give us the bad Iran Deal & couldn’t get elected dog catcher in Tennessee, is now fighting Tax Cuts….” And: “Corker dropped out of the race in Tennesse when I refused to endorse him, and now is only negative on anything Trump. Look at his record!”

THE FACTS: Trump, who spelled Tennessee right the first time, continues to label Corker an enabler of the Iran nuclear deal when he was a leading critic of it.

Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, had nothing to do with the 2015 international agreement forged by the U.S. and other world powers to constrain Iran’s ability to build a nuclear arsenal. He argued at the time that President Barack Obama should have made the international pact a treaty subject to approval by the Senate. When Obama didn’t do that, Corker helped fellow senators write legislation that subjected the accord to periodic congressional review. The legislation would have blocked the deal if that effort got enough votes. It didn’t. Obama brought the deal into effect, not Congress.

Despite that record, Trump spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said of Corker and the Iran deal: “He voted against it, but he allowed it to happen, and he put it in motion.”

Trump contended, also in a tweet, that Corker decided not to seek another term next year because he “couldn’t get re-elected.” That, of course, is his opinion. But the president has not substantiated his claim that Corker made that decision because he failed to secure his endorsement.

In fact, Trump urged Corker to run during a private meeting in September, AP learned. And Corker’s chief of staff, Todd Womack, said Trump called Corker after that to ask that he reconsider his decision to leave the Senate. Trump “reaffirmed that he would have endorsed him, as he has said many times,” the aide said.

For his part, Corker is having fun steering people on Twitter to #AlertTheDaycareStaff, where Twitter users share thoughts arising from his Oct. 8 Trump slam: “It’s a shame the White House has become an adult day care center. Someone obviously missed their shift this morning.”

Trump’s latest Twitter tirade prompted the senator to tweet Tuesday: “Same untruths from an utterly untruthful president.” And he told CNN he holds Trump responsible for “the debasing of our nation, the constant non-truth-telling, the name-calling.”
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Trump continues to destroy America

January 7, 2018October 13, 2017

Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn). (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)

Donald John Trump, the schizophrenic psychotic who occupies 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue with a lease he never qualified for or deserves, proved once again Thursday that he doesn’t give a damn about the idiots who flocked to his rallies and believed his lies.

With his latest “executive order,” Trump wiped out protections for preexisting conditions, increased healthcare deductible to obscene levels, sent premiums soaring and destroyed basic coverage requirements for millions of Americans.

The moron who promised “affordable health care” for “all Americans” instead is destroying it.

After signing his executive order, Trump’s current acting head of Health & Human Services ordered a complete and immediate stop to Affordable Care Act subsidies that provided cost-sharing payments that help lower-income Americans.

The move gives insurance companies a chance to back out of any coverage in 2018, leaving millions without insurance.

Open enrollment for 2018 begins on Nov. 1 for a shortened period imposed by Trump to further damage the Affordable Care Act. Many Americans across the nation could find no insurance to apply for.

Trump and his ragtag collection of Republican “yes boss” members of the House and Senate said the ACA, also known as Obamacare, “implode.”

To make sure that would happen, the GOP and Trump killed promotion programs and wiped out other incentives for those either seeking or wanting to continue the insurance.

ACA did not “implode.” It was sabotaged by an unqualified President and a useless Congress.

Trump is an out-of-control madman who signs “executive orders” that courts find unconstitutional and he continues his madness because he doesn’t care about the nation he swore to serve.

Among Republicans, only Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, who is leaving Congress at the end of his current term, is speaking out about the peril of Trump. He says White House staff spends most of its time trying to keep Trump under some semblance of control.

“I know for a fact that every single day at the White House, it’s a situation of trying to contain him,” Corker says. “I don’t know why the president tweets out things that are not true. We could be headed toward World War III with the kind of comments that he’s making.”

Writes Michael Gerson of The Washington Post:

The time for whispered criticisms and quiet snickering is over. The time for panic and decision is upon us. The thin line of sane, responsible advisers at the White House — such as Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson — could break at any moment. Already, Trump’s protests of eternal love for Kelly are a bad sign for the general’s future. The American government now has a dangerous fragility at its very center. Its welfare is as thin as an eggshell — perhaps as thin as Donald Trump’s skin.

Any elected Republican who shares Corker’s concerns has a political and moral duty to state them in public. If Corker is correct, many of his colleagues do have such fears. Their silence is deafening and damning.

Deafening, damning, irresponsible and scary

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Most Republicans avoid Corker-Trump fight

October 11, 2017October 10, 2017

Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., speaks to reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Sen. Bob Corker is hardly the only Republican lawmaker raising dark concerns about harm President Donald Trump might cause the U.S. and the world. But he’s one of the few willing to air those worries in public.

Most GOP senators were silent Monday, a day after Corker charged that the White House was an “adult day care” and Trump could set the nation “on the path to World War III.”

The only senator who publicly hinted at similar concerns was Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, who said both Trump and Corker should “cool it.”

“And I think it would help if the president would be the first to cool it,” he added.

Tennessee’s Corker, with his Twitter broadsides and an explosive weekend New York Times interview, gave voice to concerns that circulate widely on Capitol Hill about an unpredictable president whose tendency to personalize every issue creates risks for the GOP agenda. But Trump’s enduring popularity with a segment of the GOP base serves as a political muzzle that keeps most elected Republicans from saying anything similar, even those who believe it to be true.

Grassley, who won’t be up for re-election until 2022, responded bluntly when asked about the situation.

“I don’t see how it’s productive, and I think that two words would kind of answer your question from my point of view: Cool it,” he said. “I think it would be better if we stuck to the issues and leave personalities out of it.”

A few other Republican senators who provided public views Monday avoided aligning themselves with Corker.

“You’ll have to ask Sen. Corker what led him to make that statement. I haven’t made that statement,” Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida said of Corker’s suggestion that Trump could take the country into another world war.

Sen. Jeff Flake has been outspoken in his criticism of Trump, who’s attacked him in return. But the Arizona Republican was restrained during a joint interview with Rubio after a re-election fundraiser in Scottsdale.

“Any of us who’ve worked with Sen. Corker know that he speaks his mind,” Flake said, demurring on whether he shares Corker’s view that the White House has become an “adult day care center.”

“I agree with him on some things, I’ve supported a lot of his agenda, some things I’ve disagreed with and continue to do so,” Flake said of Trump.

The Associated Press sought to contact all 52 Republican senators Monday for their response to Corker’s comments and ask whether they believe Trump is fit for office, a question Corker declined to answer in the Times interview. With the Senate on recess this week and many offices closed for Columbus Day, the inquiries elicited few responses, and those who did largely declined to comment.

Corker offered no solution to the problem he identified so graphically. Trump is the president, and few doubt that he will remain so, despite constitutional provisions for impeachment or for the vice president to take over if the commander in chief cannot discharge his duties.

Moreover, Republicans’ political fortunes remain tied to the president’s. They need his signature if they are to rescue a flagging agenda and pass a tax overhaul, a goal many believe is imperative if the GOP is to retain control of Congress in next year’s midterm elections. So unlike Corker, who recently announced he is not running for re-election in Tennessee, even GOP Trump critics will continue to mute their concerns about his behavior and try to work with the administration.

“Sen. Corker, who’s been a strong supporter of the president in the past, is essentially saying the emperor has no clothes,” said Michael Steel, who served as spokesman to former House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio.

But, Steel added: “The president was elected under our constitutional system and that’s where we stand. Congressional leaders are going to continue concentrating on doing everything they can to get big things done for the American people, and they hope to have as much support from the administration as possible.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the target of Trump attacks after the Senate’s failure to pass health care legislation, didn’t directly answer when asked at an event in Hazard, Kentucky, whether he shared Corker’s sentiments.

“Sen. Corker is a valuable member of the Senate Republican caucus and he’s also on the Budget Committee and a particularly important player as we move to the floor on the budget next week,” McConnell said.

His comments underscored what has frustrated Republicans most about the Trump-Corker feud, which burst open Sunday when Trump began tweeting, inaccurately, that Corker had begged for his endorsement and decided not to run for re-election when Trump turned him down. Trump will need Corker if he is to get big tax changes through the Senate, where the narrow GOP majority was unable to pass McConnell’s efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act. And Corker also figures to be a key player if Trump moves as expected to unwind the Iran nuclear deal.

Vice President Mike Pence, in a statement that never mentioned Corker, praised the president for “achieving real results on the international stage. While critics engage in empty rhetoric and baseless attacks.”

Republicans do frequently complain about Trump’s attacks on fellow Republicans like McConnell, his failure to stay focused on his legislative agenda and his tendency to make demands on Congress and then blame lawmakers for poor results. But those GOP comments are nothing like Corker’s apocalyptic statements.

For House Republicans, who face voters every two years and largely represent conservative districts where support for the president remains strong, there’s even less incentive to turn against the commander in chief. Sixty-eight percent of Republican voters approve of Trump, though that’s down from 80 percent in March, according to a recent AP-NORC poll.

Rep. Mark Meadows of North Carolina, chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, criticized Corker, saying he finds “those type of comments to not be appropriate especially coming from the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, and certainly not in keeping with what I know of the way that things are conducted in the West Wing, having been there multiple times.”

“It’s really easy to be bold when you’re not coming back,” Meadows added of Corker.

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Associated Press writers Adam Beam in Hazard, Kentucky, and Bob Christie in Scottsdale, Arizona, contributed to this report. Marcy Gordon, Kevin Freking, Alan Fram, Andrew Taylor and Matthew Daly contributed from Washington.
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Corker, Trump go to social media war

October 11, 2017October 9, 2017

Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., speaks to the Sevier County Chamber of Commerce in Sevierville, Tenn. (AP Photo/Erik Schelzig)

An enraged President Donald Trump and a prominent Republican senator who fears the country could be edging toward “chaos” engaged in an intense and vitriolic back-and-forth bashing on social media Sunday, a remarkable airing of their party’s profound rifts.

In political discourse that might once have seemed inconceivable, the GOP’s foreign policy expert in the Senate felt compelled to answer his president’s barbs by tweeting: “It’s a shame the White House has become an adult day care center. Someone obviously missed their shift this morning.”

In an interview Sunday with The New York Times, Corker said Trump could set the U.S. “on the path to World War III” with threats toward other countries. Corker also said Trump acted as if he was on his old reality-TV show and that he concerned the senator, adding: “He would have to concern anyone who cares about our nation.”

Corker also said his concerns about Trump were shared by nearly every Senate Republican, the paper reported.

In a series of stinging tweets earlier in the day, Trump contended Corker:

—Was “largely responsible for the horrendous” Iran nuclear deal, which the Democratic Obama administration negotiated and Corker considered badly flawed. The senator also tried to require that President Barack Obama submit the accord to Congress for approval.

—Intended to obstruct the White House agenda, though he offered no evidence for saying he expected Corker “to be a negative voice.”

—“Begged” for Trump’s endorsement in his 2018 re-election, then opted against seeking a third term when Trump declined, showing the senator “didn’t have the guts to run.” The Associated Press reported that Trump, in a private meeting in September, had urged Corker to run. Corker’s chief of staff, Todd Womack, said Sunday that Trump called Corker last Monday to ask that he reconsider his decision to leave the Senate. Trump “reaffirmed that he would have endorsed him, as he has said many times,” the aide said.

—Wanted to be secretary of state, and “I said ’NO THANKS,’” said Trump, who picked Exxon Mobil’s Rex Tillerson for that Cabinet post. Corker, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman, was mentioned as a possible pick after the election.

Trump added another tweet Sunday evening: “Bob Corker gave us the Iran Deal, & that’s about it. We need HealthCare, we need Tax Cuts/Reform, we need people that can get the job done!”

Corker always had been one to speak his mind, and even before Sunday’s verbal volleys, his new free agent status promised to make Trump and the party nervous. Already, there was the prospect of even more elbow room to say what he wants and to vote how he pleases over the next 15 months as Trump and the party’s leaders on Capitol Hill struggle to get their agenda on track.

Not long before Trump’s tweeting, White House budget director Mick Mulvaney said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that “it’s going to be fun to work” with Corker, “especially now that he’s not running for re-election, because I think it sort of unleashes him to do whatever — and say whatever — he wants to say.”

In his interview with the Times, Corker said: “Look, except for a few people, the vast majority of our caucus understands what we’re dealing with here,” 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.”

Corker delivered a rebuke of the Trump White House after the president’s tweets scoffing at Tillerson’s diplomatic efforts to resolve the crisis with North Korea. Corker said Tillerson, along with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and White House chief of staff John Kelly, are “those people that help separate our country from chaos.”

And Corker will be at the center of what may be a stormy debate over the future of the Iran agreement. Trump’s hostility toward the deal has stoked concerns he’s aiming to dismantle the international accord despite Europe’s objections. Corker is opposed to scrapping the agreement outright.

“You can only tear these things up one time,” Corker said. “It might feel good for a second. But one of the things that’s important for us is to keep our allies with us, especially our Western allies.”

Corker is the latest Republican to face Trump’s wrath. The president in recent months has lit into Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., over the failure of the GOP to repeal and replace Obama’s health care law, and specifically targeted Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, for their opposition to GOP health legislation.

Corker, 65, announced last month that his second, six-year term would be his last.

Corker in August delivered a blistering assessment of Trump in the wake of the president’s contentious remarks about the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia. Corker said Trump hasn’t “demonstrated that he understands the character of this nation.”

Trump fired back, tweeting that Corker’s comments were strange “considering that he is constantly asking me whether or not he should run again in ’18.

Associated Press writer Andrew Taylor contributed to this report.

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Contact Richard Lardner on Twitter at http://twitter.com/rplardner
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GOP Senator: Trump is not stable

August 18, 2017August 18, 2017

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn. is surrounded by reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

A prominent Republican senator delivered a stinging rebuke Thursday of Donald Trump’s short time in office, declaring he has not shown the stability or competence required for an American president to succeed.

Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, also said Trump “recently has not demonstrated that he understands the character of this nation.” During comments to local reporters after a speech to the Chattanooga Rotary Club, Corker called for “radical changes” in how the Trump White House operates.

Separately, Republican Sen. Tim Scott told a newspaper in his home state of South Carolina that Trump’s heavily criticized response to violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, “complicates this administration’s moral authority.”

Corker’s remarks, which were posted on Facebook, came two days after Trump declared at a New York press conference that white supremacists don’t bear all the blame for the melee in Charlottesville, where a woman was killed after being struck by a car driven into a crowd. Trump triggered a firestorm of protest, with a number of Republicans criticizing him for giving weight to the complaints of white nationalists by refusing to definitively condemn them.

Corker has sought to be a strong supporter of Trump’s, particularly on foreign policy matters. He was considered as a candidate for secretary of state in the Trump administration before Rex Tillerson, the former chief executive officer of Exxon-Mobil, was picked for the job.

But Trump’s impulsive and often bombastic style has complicated the relationship for Corker and other congressional Republicans. A few months ago, following reports that Trump had disclosed highly classified information to a pair of Russian diplomats in the Oval Office, Corker said the White House was “in a downward spiral.”

But Corker in recent weeks had largely declined to answer questions about Trump’s tweets or other political drama, telling reporters covering Congress that he was focused instead on matters of policy.

He elected to weigh in Thursday, however. Noting that the country is polarized, Corker said, “Helping inspire divisions because it generates support from your political base is not a formula for causing our nation to advance, our nation to overcome the many issues that we have to deal with right now.”

Corker said, “The world needs for our president to be successful,” and said he’s hopeful Trump will do what’s necessary to bring out the best in people, regardless of their political affiliations.

Trump, he said, needs “to take stock of the role that he plays in our nation and move beyond himself, move way beyond himself, and move to a place where daily he’s waking up thinking about what is best for our nation.”

Corker also defended his Republican colleague, Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona. On Twitter Thursday, Trump called Flake “toxic” while praising his primary election opponent.

Flake is “one of the finest best human beings I’ve ever met,” Corker said. He said the White House would be well served to embrace Flake because of his substance and character. Flake has a “conscience and is a real conservative,” according to Corker.

Scott is the Senate’s only black Republican. He told The Post and Courier of Charleston that Trump erred by drawing a “moral equivalency” between the white supremacists and counterdemonstrators in Charlottesville.

“I think you are either missing four centuries of history in this nation or you are trying to make something what it’s not,” Scott said.

Trump’s controversies have compromised the GOP’s ability to get things done on health care, taxes and financial regulations and have put Republicans in a “precarious position,” Scott told the newspaper.

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Associated Press writer Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.

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Contact Richard Lardner on Twitter: http://twitter.com/rplardner
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