The upcoming retirements of Bob Corker and now Jeff Flake from the United States Senate will be helpful to President Donald Trump if his supporters get what they hope for: Republican successors in those seats who will be better soldiers for Trump. That’s very likely in Tennessee, where the Trump-friendly congresswoman Marsha Blackburn is an early favorite to win the GOP nomination to succeed Corker and would have a clear advantage in the Republican-heavy state.
Things are more complicated in Arizona, where the only remaining declared candidate is the super-Trumpy Kelli Ward, who has the backing of the likes of Steve Bannon but is viewed as a problematic general-election candidate against the leading Democrat, congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema. (Flake, for that matter, would have been in deep trouble in his reelection bid had he made it through a tough primary.) The GOP establishment views Flake’s exit as a chance to find a better general-election candidate who could also win in a primary—meaning someone more amenable to the president but also more electable than Ward. One Washington Republican told me Martha McSally, a congresswoman and retired Air Force colonel, might fit the bill.
But even assuming things go well for Republicans in these races, that doesn’t solve a more immediate problem for Donald Trump: Corker and Flake, who on Tuesday issued separate broadsides against the president, will remain in the Senate for the next 14 months. That’s a lot of time, with a lot of legislative items on the agenda. As a practical matter, both senators’ reliability for party-line votes—on tax reform, on health care, on anything else the Republicans will want to accomplish before the 2018 midterms—is in real question.
Mitch McConnell has a narrow margin in the Senate to begin with. These Trump-inspired departures don’t make it any easier for McConnell to get the president’s agenda through.
Trump Tweet of the Day
So nice being with Republican Senators today. Multiple standing ovations! Most are great people who want big Tax Cuts and success for U.S.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 24, 2017
What should Americans make of the back-and-forth between Trump and his Republican Senate foes? The message Tuesday from White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders: This is what the voters signed up for.
“The people of this country didn’t elect somebody to be weak; they elected somebody to be strong,” Sanders said when asked if the president should engage in squabbles that distract from his agenda. “And when he gets hit, he’s going to hit back.”
But what is the president trying to accomplish with these attacks? “I think that the president is voicing the frustration that probably you see from a lot of people in the state of Tennessee,” Sanders replied.
But how does that advance his agenda? “People didn’t elect him to be weak, they elected him to be strong,” Sanders repeated.
Bob Corker’s opposition could torpedo tax reform; given that, does the president feel that he’s winning? “I think he feels like America is winning,” Sanders said.
There’s been no decision yet on whether to scrap a deal between American airline manufacturer Boeing and Iran Air. The Tehran-based airline has been linked to terrorist groups and is believed to have transported weapons and terrorists. The lifting of sanctions on Iran following the implementation of the Iran nuclear deal, however, prompted Boeing to ink a multi-billion-dollar agreement to sell planes to Iran Air.
Boeing requires licenses from the Treasury Department to move forward on the deal, which congressional critics have called on the Trump administration to deny. The Washington Free Beacon reported Monday that “the administration is likely to nix” the Boeing deal, but a White House source tells me there’s been no official recommendation made to the president by his national-security team—and there likely won’t be one anytime soon.
Asked at Tuesday’s press briefing, Sarah Huckabee Sanders said she “couldn’t weigh into” whether or not the president was planning on killing the Boeing-Iran Air deal.
Clinton Watch—From the Washington Post: “Clinton campaign, DNC paid for research that led to Russia dossier”
Between the morning sounding off from Bob Corker and the Tuesday afternoon announcement from Jeff Flake, the president’s highly-anticipated luncheon with the Senate Republican conference seems to have been relatively uneventful. But this detail, from Bloomberg, caught my eye:
Are Virginia Democrats leaving black voters behind in their attempt to “correct” the working-class whites they lost in 2016? Steve Phillips at the Nation makes a convincing case.
“Meanwhile, organizations specifically focused on mobilizing black voters—who comprised 37 percent of all Virginia Democratic voters in 2016—have to practically beg, borrow, and steal for resources to engage the voters who form the cornerstone of Democratic politics,” he writes. “BlackPAC, New Virginia Majority, and other community-based organizations have managed to gather enough resources to conduct a $1 million black-turnout program, but that’s just a fraction of the $8–10 million that should be allocated to reaching black voters, based on their numbers and centrality to Democratic victory.”
Read more here.
More on Virginia—Read my colleague Andrew Egger’s feature in this week’s magazine on the closer-than-expected governor’s race in Virginia, where Republican Ed Gillespie is attempting to deny Democrats a second consecutive term in Richmond by taking on Ralph Northam.
Song of the Day— “Green Onions” by Booker T. & the M.G.’s
