In October, we recounted Tennessee senator Bob Corker’s speedy journey from being a cautious ally of Donald Trump to being one of the president’s sharpest critics. By the end of that journey—or that leg of the journey—the Tennessean was calling the White House an “adult day care center” and worrying that its occupant had put us “on a path to World War III.” “He concerns me,” Corker said to the New York Times on October 8. “He would have to concern anyone who cares about our nation.” In a television interview, Corker said Trump was “an utterly untruthful president.”
The senator’s criticisms provoked numerous scathing presidential tweets and earned him his own Trumpian nickname: “Liddle’ Bob Corker.”
At the time, Washington’s commentariat assumed that Corker’s decision to retire had let him take a tougher stance on Trump. We weren’t convinced. For one thing, his new stance amounted to little more than a few critical comments aimed at the White House, each lavishly praised by the media. To us it seemed pretty simple: When Trump was up, there was Corker cheering him on; when Trump was down, Corker was off somewhere expressing grave “concern” about the president’s fitness for office.
Well, Trump’s up again—or as up as such a broadly unpopular president is likely to be. The stock market’s roaring, the economy shows signs of robust growth, the president got a major tax bill through the legislature, and his foe du jour, Michael Wolff, is so dislikeable and unscrupulous that even the liberals in the media can’t bring themselves to embrace him.
So where is Corker? On Monday he was with Trump on Air Force One. The senator was with several congressional colleagues traveling to Nashville where the president was speaking at the American Farm Bureau Federation’s annual convention. It’s said the two have bonded over inaccurate reporting of the tax bill, and at the Farm Bureau event the president called Corker “a great senator.”
Corker is no longer indignant about Trump. When we asked him if he’d like to comment on Trump’s “big button” tweet about North Korea, the senator avoided the question. “You keep asking that question,” he joked at last, “and I keep being too busy to answer it.” When our reporter persisted, he hedged: “Generally speaking, I’m not a proponent of foreign policy through tweets.”
We don’t criticize Corker for going easy on Trump or for palling around with him on Air Force One. Nor do we suggest that elected officials should either always heap contempt on the president or always laud him. They should applaud him when he’s right and fault him when he’s wrong. But Corker’s comments last Fall weren’t about policies or decisions. They were about Trump the man: his character and his temperamental inability to do the job. These things haven’t changed—and they don’t improve with poll numbers or with offers to come aboard Air Force One.
What worries us is the timing. The president is said to be finalizing the administration’s Iran policy. Corker was a prime enabler of President Obama’s disastrous Iran nuclear deal, and a rapprochement between Trump and Corker could give the senator enough influence to urge the administration to treat Tehran’s ruling mullahs as partners instead of what they are—our enemies. For now, though, we’ll hope that Corker has rediscovered his appreciation for Donald Trump because his earlier criticisms were less about conviction and more about seeking applause from the media.
