On Labor Day, President Donald Trump argued that the Justice Department should not have brought charges against Chris Collins and Duncan Hunter for insider trading and misuse of campaign funds because the cases could hurt his party in the upcoming midterm elections.
Two long running, Obama era, investigations of two very popular Republican Congressmen were brought to a well publicized charge, just ahead of the Mid-Terms, by the Jeff Sessions Justice Department. Two easy wins now in doubt because there is not enough time. Good job Jeff……
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 3, 2018
While it was a remarkable instance of Trump saying the quiet part out loud, the president’s unabashed call for Attorney General Jeff Sessions to give Republicans a pass in legal matters in order to avoid political inconveniences — in other words, corruption — barely registered a blip on Congress’s radar.
Thus began a familiar cycle: A couple of members, such as Ben Sasse (“The United States is not some banana republic with a two-tiered system of justice,” he said of the latest controversy) and retiring Arizona Republican Jeff Flake were willing to respond firmly to Trump’s missteps.
Others, wearing ruffled brows, vaguely expressed concern. On Tuesday night, Maine Republican Susan Collins, who could be a key swing vote on Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, said the tweet was “appalling.” And Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski responded to reporters with a touch of exasperation, “Yes, it upsets me.”
“The president’s tweet upsets me. I’m looking at it just as you are looking at it,” she said. “I thought that yesterday’s comments were not appropriate, and I was upset by them.”
But most members defaulted to saying they haven’t seen Trump’s statement yet, or they claimed not to have enough time to address the issue.
“I haven’t read it, but you know, I don’t comment on the president’s tweets,” said Senate intelligence committee chairman Richard Burr. “Only he can comment on them,” Burr added, whatever that means. Alaska Senator Dan Sullivan echoed the response, saying he hadn’t seen Trump’s remarks either.
Would Sullivan tweet something similar? “No,” he told THE WEEKLY STANDARD. Why not? “I just wouldn’t.”
Reporters are sometimes accused of posing loaded questions if they ask Republicans simply whether they agree with the president on a given topic. Consider this conversation with House Freedom Caucus chairman Mark Meadows from Tuesday night:
TWS: The president sort of argued yesterday that the DOJ shouldn’t have indicted Collins or Hunter…
MEADOWS: I don’t know anything about that. I mean, somebody else already asked me about it.
TWS: You didn’t see the tweet?
MEADOWS: Oh, of course I saw the tweet. But I don’t know anything about Collins or Duncan Hunter.
TWS: I mean, would you tweet something similar to what the president said?
MEADOWS: Now, Haley.
TWS: I’m just curious.
MEADOWS, before entering an elevator: No, you’re not. You’re trying to ask a provocative question that would provide a… You can go back through my Twitter feed for the last four years and figure out what I would tweet.
Nearly 600 days into Trump’s presidency, Republicans have this game of dodgeball down to a science, perhaps none more so than House Speaker Paul Ryan. “Justice is blind. Justice should be blind… I think it’s very important that we respect the fact that justice should be blind,” he said during a press conference Wednesday morning, never mentioning Trump or Sessions by name.
Others, like staunch Trump ally Matt Gaetz, defended Trump’s position, maintaining in a hallway interview that Democrats have been given preferential treatment. “Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee were never really put under an adequate amount of scrutiny,” he told TWS. “The president is often frustrated by the double standard. I think he vents that frustration frequently on Twitter.”
Meanwhile, some Senate Republicans have displayed a newfound openness to the possibility that Trump could fire Sessions after November’s elections. Trump’s recommendation that DoJ officials prioritize avoiding political risks to Republicans when charging people with crimes would likely make Senate confirmation of a successor significantly more challenging. On the subject, Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley told reporters to “ask me that when there’s a replacement to be made.”
Retiring Tennessee Republican Bob Corker predicted it would be “tremendously difficult finding someone, first of all, who would want to do the job, but secondly, finding someone who will rise to the level that I think it will take here in the Senate for that confirmation to occur.”
“I mean, obviously [Trump] doesn’t have a healthy respect for sort of the democratic institutions we have here,” said Corker.
