The Corker-Trump Rapprochement

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 Timeson 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.”