Earlier today, we reported on the manner in which Bob Corker had responded to a Trump Twitter Tirade this morning: by suggesting that Trump’s White House was like an adult day care. But it turns out the Corkmeister was just warming up for the real insults, which dropped this evening in an interview with the New York Times:

Senator Bob Corker, the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, charged in an interview on Sunday that President Trump was treating his office like “a reality show,” with reckless threats toward other countries that could set the nation “on the path to World War III.”

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.”

As for the Twitter battle this morning — in which Trump claimed that Corker had unsuccessfully sought Trump’s endorsement — Corker flatly called Trump a liar:

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.”

The senator recalled four conversations this year, a mix of in-person meetings and phone calls, in which he said the president had encouraged him to run for re-election. Mr. Trump, he said, repeatedly indicated he wanted to come to Tennessee for an early rally on Mr. Corker’s behalf and even telephoned him last Monday to try to get him to reconsider his decision to retire.

“When I told him that that just wasn’t in the cards, he said, ‘You know, if you run, I’ll endorse you.’ I said, ‘Mr. President, it’s just not in the cards; I’ve already made a decision.’ So then we began talking about other candidates that were running.”

Since Trump is indeed a well-known and incredibly brazen liar, Corker’s claims ring true.

As noted this morning, Corker is a lame duck who is free to speak his mind, where others have to pretend to love the emperor’s fancy new clothes. And Corker explicitly claims that a lot of people agree with his sentiments, but just aren’t saying so out loud:

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.”

It’s always tempting to believe we’ve reached a turning point with Trump, where men and women of good will are willing to speak out and, for example, call him a f*cking moron when that is their honest view.

We’re not there yet. We’ll be there only when such things are said in public by Senators who aren’t lame ducks. You know: the finger-to-the-wind Senators.

I despair what will have to happen to our country to get us to that point.

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