Senior Republican senator Bob Corker has lashed out at Donald Trump, after the US President took to Twitter in a stinging attack on the retiring lawmaker, claiming Corker “begged me to endorse him” before deciding not to run for re-election.
Trump also accused Corker of being “largely responsible for the horrendous Iran deal!” adding that Corker “didn’t have the guts to run!”.
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The exchange between the president and the chair of the Senate foreign relations committee was “the latest undignified episode in Trump’s bizarre and fractious relationship with the Republican establishment and parts of his own administration,” The Guardian says.
Corker’s chief of staff, Todd Womack, directly contradicted Trump's claims, saying: “The president called Senator Corker on Monday afternoon and asked him to reconsider his decision not to seek re-election and reaffirmed that he would have endorsed him, as he has said many times.”
In a subsequent interview with the New York Times, Corker went on to say 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.’”