Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Sen. Bob Corker was once considered to be President Donald Trump's vice president and secretary of state. Republicans to Trump and Corker: Please just stop 'We’ve got so many other things that we need to be focusing on right now,' one GOP senator says of the growing nastiness.

Senate Republicans are imploring President Donald Trump and Sen. Bob Corker to end their increasingly ugly feud, fretting that it's threatening to further hobble the party's flagging agenda.

But the public tit-for-tat has shown no sign of abating.


On Tuesday, Trump took to Twitter to lambaste "Liddle Bob Corker," after the Tennessee Republican said he worried that Trump’s belligerent foreign policy rhetoric could ignite "World War III." Former Trump strategist Steve Bannon called on Corker to resign, and House Budget Chairman Diane Black (R-Tenn.) took Trump’s side over that of her home state colleague.

The standoff has Senate Republicans forced to choose between a senior senator and the president of their own party. And it's exacerbating the perception of Republican dysfunction at a time that the party's agenda is stalled on Capitol Hill and a slate of outsiders is threatening primaries against GOP incumbents.

The Corker-Trump tussle has been playing out for months, but it ratcheted up after Corker announced his retirement two weeks ago.

Trump “needs to stop. But I wish Bob would stop too. Just stop,” said Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) in an interview Tuesday. "We’ve got so many other things that we need to be focusing on right now. We need to look ahead, not reflect on anything that’s been done or said in the past.”

Corker had no response to Trump's latest taunt as of Tuesday; he and his office have kept quiet since giving a lengthy interview to The New York Times on Sunday. Corker — in addition to saying the president could trigger World War III, and accusing him of treating his job like a reality show — gave the harshest criticism by a sitting Republican senator of Trump yet.

Corker was once considered to be Trump's pick for vice president and secretary of state, and Senate Republicans have been gobsmacked by the disintegration of their relationship. It began this spring when Corker said the White House was in a “downward spiral." More recently, the senator questioned Trump’s competence in the wake of white supremacist protests in Charlottesville, Virginia. Last week, Corker said some of Trump’s Cabinet secretaries are keeping the country from “chaos.”

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Trump claimed that Corker “begged” him to run for reelection and blamed him for the approval of the nuclear deal with Iran. Corker said on Sunday the White House has become an “adult day care center.”

And on and on it has gone.

Republicans hoped the back-and-forth would cease with the new workweek, but no such luck. On Tuesday morning, Trump unleashed this another tweet: “The Failing @nytimes set Liddle' Bob Corker up by recording his conversation. Was made to sound a fool, and that's what I am dealing with!” Later, asked about Corker’s “World War III” comments, Trump said the country was on the “wrong path” before he became president and is now on the “right path.”

“It’s an unfortunate exchange … I would like to see this end,” Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) said in the Capitol on Tuesday, adding that he does not, in fact, believe the White House is an adult day care center. “I would encourage them both to stop what they’re doing and get focused on what we need to be doing.”

With the Senate on recess this week, Republicans fanned across the country. But the Corker-Trump skirmish distracted from their main mission of selling tax reform. Instead, many GOP lawmakers are being asked whether they agree with Corker, who also remarked to the Times that the majority of Senate Republicans share his views about Trump.

Most senators have studiously avoided taking sides.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell called Corker a “valuable member” of the party, noting his importance to passing tax reform. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) told The Associated Press that the news wire should talk to Corker, not him. And Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) noted that he, too, occasionally has disagreed with the president.

"Our focus isn’t on spats between Corker and the president," Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) told the Charleston Post and Courier.

Most of all, Republicans tried to avoid escalating things further.

“I have a lot of respect for Sen. Corker and what he brings to the Senate," Blunt said. "But I think the president is leading in the right direction and I’m supportive of what he’s doing."

Others were far less restrained. Bannon, who is recruiting primary challengers to GOP incumbents, told Fox News on Monday that Corker “doesn’t have the guts” to run again for reelection and that he’s a “total disgrace.”

“Look, if you talk about an adult day care center, I’m sorry, but I think the Senate is an adult day care center,” said Black (R-Tenn.), who is running for governor, in a Tuesday interview with Hugh Hewitt. “But I’m not sure that all of this throwing these words back and forth to one another are really very helpful.”

On that, at least, Republicans agree. Corker is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which must approve many of Trump’s diplomatic nominees, including any potential successor to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

Plus, Corker already is threatening to oppose any tax reform plan that blows a hole in the deficit. With Republicans operating under such tight margins in the Senate, public feuds between a rank-and-file senator and the president is, at best, a distraction and, at worst, a risk to the entire GOP agenda.

Corker’s allies say he would not vote against Trump’s priorities out of revenge. But Republicans don’t want to take any chances.

"I would hope," Ernst said, "that it doesn’t bleed into legislation.”