A reckless Senator Bob Corker (R-TN) undermined President Trump and American foreign policy once again on Friday with a stunningly irresponsible statement made during an interview with the Washington Post.
“You cannot publicly castrate your own secretary of state without giving yourself that binary choice,” Corker told the Post.
Corker described his use of “binary choice” language by stating the president was “creating scenarios in which the United States might be forced to choose between waging war on North Korea or Iran or allowing those countries to threaten the U.S. with nuclear weapons,” Politico reported:
According to Corker, the secretary was in fact one of Trump’s greatest assets, and had made strides toward improving relationships with other global powers, notably China.
“The greatest diplomatic activities we have are with China, and the most important, and they have come a long, long way,” he said. “Some of the things we are talking about are phenomenal.”
It was an unprecedented and disturbing attack on the president of his own party by the current chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Conservatives and supporters of President Trump around the country immediately escalated their criticism of Corker.
On Saturday, “Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon slammed establishment Senate Republicans for not condemning Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., and his attacks on President Trump,” the Washington Examiner reported.
Last week, Bannon called on Corker to resign for those attacks.
“Appearing on Fox News’ Hannity show on Monday, former White House chief strategist and Breitbart executive chairman Steve Bannon told host Sean Hannity ‘if Bob Corker has any honor, any decency, he should resign immediately,” The Tennessee Star reported.
Bannon was reacting to a series of reckless attacks made on President Trump by Senator Corker (R-TN), the first coming in several Twitter exchanges with the president on Sunday morning, the others coming in an interview with the New York Times, which released the audio transcript of the conversation.
“In a time of war, we have troops in Afghanistan, in the Northwest Pacific in Korea. We have a major problem,” Bannon said.
“It could be like World War I. In the South China Sea, in the Persian Gulf – we have American lives at risk every day. He tweets on Sunday that it’s like the adult center and somebody didn’t have the morning shift. Then he has the audacity to go to The New York Times?” the former White House chief strategist asked rhetorically.
“These people have no respect for the working men and women in the United States. I tell you what – Senator Corker is an absolute disgrace. And I agree with Jason Miller. He was the comms director on our campaign – I think one of the best comms people around. Jason was on CNN. . . he called for Senator Corker to resign, for the governor of Tennessee to replace him with Marsha Blackburn, a real conservative,” Bannon said.
“If Bob Corker had any honor, any decency. he should resign immediately. He should not let those words stand on what he said about the president of the United States,” Bannon added.
One veteran Tennessee Republican political hand tells The Star Corker’s attacks on the president will not play well in the Volunteer State, where President Trump remains very popular and won 92 out of 95 counties in the 2016 general election.
“Corker has taken his attacks against President Trump far beyond the waters’ edge,” the operative said. “In fact, he is sending a signal to our enemies–particularly North Korea–that they can act with impunity against the United States, and Senator Corker will respond by criticizing the president, and not them. It’s a dangerous and reckless course of action Corker is undertaking, one unworthy of the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, much less any member of the United States Senate,” the Tennessee political expert says.
“Mitch McConnell needs to replace Senator Corker as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,” the savvy Tennessean concludes.
