Sen. Bob Corker Calls Trump’s Government Shutdown “Purposefully Contrived” and “Juvenile”

The outgoing Tennessee senator is not holding back.

In a CNN interview Sunday morning, retiring Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker (R) accused President Donald Trump of shutting down the government for his own political gain, calling the shutdown a “purposefully contrived fight.”

“This is a made-up fight so the president can look like he’s fighting,” the Republican senator told CNN’s Jake Tapper. “Even if he wins, our borders are going to be insecure.” Early Saturday, the government entered a shutdown because of a fight over funding for Trump’s border wall. The shutdown could possibly extend through the new year, according to Mick Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget and acting White House chief of staff.

Corker said that the president is likely refusing to make a deal so he can make border security a campaign issue in 2020. “This is like falling off a table,” Corker said. “The Democrats easily would support more border funding, border security…in exchange for dealing with the Dreamers, and Republicans want to deal with Dreamers.” Corker was referring to undocumented immigrants who are shielded from deportation through Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). The government briefly shut down last year largely due to disagreement over the fate of the program, which was left unaddressed in the final spending bill.

“This is something that is unnecessary. It’s a spectacle, and candidly, it’s juvenile,” Corker said. “The whole thing is juvenile.”

A few hours later, Trump tweeted:

As Corker’s director of communications and others noted on Twitter, the president’s statements are not true: Trump told Corker he would have endorsed him if he had sought reelection, according to an October 2017 CNN article. Corker did not have a role in creating the Iran deal, and in fact vocally opposed it.

The Tennessee senator was quick to bite back, which makes sense, seeing as his time in the Senate is quickly coming to a close.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate