Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker responded Monday night to President Donald Trump’s comments after a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in which Trump appeared more sympathetic to Putin’s denials of Russian meddling in the 2016 election than to his own intelligence community’s assessment of the issue.
“My people came to me, Dan Coats came to me and some others, they said they think it’s Russia,” Trump said during a joint press conference with Putin after their summit in Helsinki, Finland. “I have President Putin, he just said it’s not Russia. I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be.”
Corker told reporters that those comments were shocking.
“I mean, to create some kind of equivalence between our intelligence agencies and what Putin says, to me, was just jaw dropping,” said Corker. “And I think the president has difficulty conflating how people treat him personally with representing our nation’s interests.”
“Obviously, Putin did a very good job of charming, and the president said some things that are regrettable and very disappointing,” the retiring Tennessee Republican added. “[Trump], time and time again, makes decisions not based on what’s good for the country, but how someone treats him. And that was very evident today.”
The senator did not express much hope that Congress or anyone else could change Trump’s way of thinking. The only pushback that seems to have an effect on the president, Corker asserted, was rare pushback from his political base.
“So I’m sorry, no amount of talking to him affects him,” said Corker.
“Plenty of people have weighed in with their disappointment and just sorrow and sadness to see an American president not defend his own intelligence. These people work for him, by the way. I mean, I think sometimes he forgets the fact that these intelligence agencies report and work for him.”
Corker emphasized the consensus of the Senate and the U.S. intelligence community that the Russian government meddled in the 2016 election. “It’s a fact,” he said. When asked whether Congress would pass legislation to reinforce the United States’ relationship with NATO allies in response to Trump’s actions, Corker indicated that would not be enough.
“The president can do more damage in 15 minutes to that relationship than all of us working together for months can overcome,” he said. “That’s the problem here.”
