Nine months have passed since President Trump caused World War III to trend on Twitter, so the phenomenon was due for a repeat. This time around, however, the term didn’t make waves because Trump was accusing two GOP senators of being childish. Rather, a GOP senator accused Trump of being volatile enough to cause nukes to fly, and the lawmaker in question happens to be the head of the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee. Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee has also been feuding with Trump since the president made him the subject of his Sunday morning Twitter tantrum, and it is on.
When the feud last left off, Corker had called the White House an “adult day care center” after Trump had claimed that he “begged” for a reelection endorsement before dropping out. Corker had previously stumped for Trump but grew disillusioned (in August) with the president, who the senator felt “has not yet been able to demonstrate the stability nor some of the competence” required for the job. So, Trump’s claws came out, as they will do again once he hears what Corker told the New York Times:
[Corker] charged in an interview on Sunday that President 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, Mr. Corker said he was alarmed about a president who acts “like he’s doing The Apprentice or something.”
Not only does Corker call Trump a liar for the “endorsement” tweets — he claims that Trump encouraged him to run for Congress again — but he really goes in hard against Trump’s abilities to govern.
In fact, the entire interview is full of claims that one would ordinarily consider wild for a sitting senator to say about a president from his own party, but Corker is not afraid to talk. He told the NY Times that he “know[s] for a fact” that White House officials struggle every day to “contain” Trump’s actions. The senator says that “except for a few people,” the congressional GOP feels the same way and “understand[s] the volatility that we’re dealing with.” And Corker has absolutely no clue why Trump can’t stop lashing out on Twitter:
“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.”
Much has been made about how Trump’s tweets against North Korea could actually start a war between nations. Yet Corker has pretty much guaranteed that Trump will not do that at least for a few days, right? Because tomorrow and the next day, he’ll still be tweeting about Corker. And probably the NFL, too, because 2017 truly is weirder than anyone expected it to be.
(Via New York Times)