Corker’s Criticism Is A Clarion Call
— And both the media and the GOP need to act
Quick follow-up to yesterday’s post.
Last night, the New York Times reported on the statements of Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee that Trump’s treating the presidency as a reality show could put the country on a path to World War III. It did so in almost exactly the same way that the WaPo article I criticized reported on Tillerson’s calling Trump a “fucking moron” — as yet another escalating rift between two men, followed by an analysis of the potential political consequences of that “feud,” and framing the criticism of Trump as remarkable. Once again ignoring the main issue — that Trump is a threat to the country and the world — the reporters cast about for language in which to frame Corker’s criticism, and in so doing focused on the fact that Trump was criticized by his own party, rather than on the validity of and widespread agreement with the criticism, and the risk to the country and the world from GOP’s failure to do anything about the conduct giving rise to it.
As Tillerson did before him, Corker said what most people think about Trump, only he didn’t say it privately in frustration, he said it deliberately and on the record.
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.”
“He concerns me,” Mr. Corker added. “He would have to concern anyone who cares about our nation.”
Mr. 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.
Given that multiple news organizations, pundits, and lay citizens have observed with increasing dismay for months on end that Trump treats the presidency like a set of the Apprentice, it is rather ridiculous to frame this criticism as extraordinary.
The Times also said, again as if this view were somehow unique to Corker,
The senator views Mr. Trump as given to irresponsible outbursts — a political novice who has failed to make the transition from show business.
Is there a person alive who does not agree with this statement other than the most rabid members of Trump’s febrile base? It’s axiomatic that Trump is given to irresponsible outbursts. It’s absurd for The Times to suggest that Corker’s views are somehow exceptional, that he is making an unprecedented observation.
And so The Times goes on in its standard way, characterizing the exchange between Trump and Corker as a “feud,” treating us to multiple paragraphs about how the “rift” between the two men has been building, and how that “rift” might affect Trump’s agenda in the Senate. (One of many examples: “Mr. Trump’s feud with Mr. 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”.) For the NYT, it’s just another political fight, extraordinary not because of its content, but because it comes from a high-ranking member of Trump’s own party and because it is public. (But does the NYT seriously think that Corker’s concerns about Trump’s recklessness, temperament, and lying will affect how he votes on the GOP agenda? Give me a break. Look at Corker’s voting record to date, NYT, and then maybe get back to us on how the “feud” is going to derail Trump legislatively.)
The Times, like WaPo with Tillerson, simply cannot look at Corker’s statements except through the lens of horserace politics, and in so doing it dances around if not misses entirely the crucial points.
The point is not that Corker said that Trump treats the job like a reality show and could set us on a path to World War III — but that Corker is correct. The point is not that it is extraordinary for a president to face the criticism that Corker leveled — but that it is extraordinary for a president to conduct himself the way Trump does.
And Corker’s 25- minute interview is not, as the Times suggests, simply the capstone of some simmering feud; it is plainly intended as a deliberate salvo in order to highlight the risks that Trump poses to the country and to force his party into a public dialogue about those risks:
All but inviting his colleagues to join him in speaking out about the president, Mr. Corker said his concerns about Mr. 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.”
As for the tweets that set off the feud on Sunday morning, Mr. Corker expressed a measure of powerlessness.
“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.”
Please, mainstream media, I am begging you. What is extraordinary is not that Corker said what he did. What is extraordinary is that a sitting president is so endangering the country that other elected officials are expressing fear he will launch World War III, and that every day inside the White House involves a battle to restrain him from acting on his terrible instincts, rather than acting with the intellect and deliberation and judgment necessary to defend this country. What is extraordinary is that it has taken so long for anyone in his party to say it aloud. What is extraordinary is that Corker’s views are widely shared not only among Trump’s open critics but among his party, and that no one in the GOP — including Corker himself — is doing a thing about it. What is extraordinary is not that Corker has outed himself and his colleagues, but that he had to do so at all. What is extraordinary is that the GOP would rather endanger the country and the world than admit the truth about Trump. What is extraordinary is that it is simply ordinary for the GOP to put party before country.
And lest any Republican suggest Corker doesn’t speak for them, bear in mind the Times functionally confirmed Corker’s statements in this critical (but for them, throwaway) statement:
In a 25-minute conversation, Mr. Corker, speaking carefully and purposefully, seemed to almost find cathartic satisfaction by portraying Mr. Trump in terms that most senior Republicans use only in private.
Corker has all but announced that Republicans are deliberately propping up a man who they know endangers the world. This is not an “extraordinary rebuke” to Trump — it’s a goddamned clarion call for his caucus and for the press to stop dancing around the problem and pretending Trump is anything but the threat he is. So please, NYT, WaPo, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, USA Today, WSJ, even Fox: follow up and do your jobs better. Get every Republican on the record to admit what we all know anyway and that they are telling you as well as themselves in private: Trump is unfit. Force them to lay the groundwork to uphold their own oaths of office and defend this country from its greatest threat — the internal one, which currently occupies the presidency, and which, like the malignant cancer he is, needs to be removed if we are to survive.
