The deafening silence that’s destroying Donald Trump
Bob Corker publicly stated this week that Donald Trump is too psychologically unstable to be President of the United States, making for a grand total of one Republican Senator who’s been willing to say so. Corker also happens to be the one who’s retiring in a year and doesn’t have to worry about what he says. But as we speak, it’s not Corker’s words that are destroying what’s left of Trump’s tenuous grasp on the presidency – it’s what’s not being said.
It’s true that no other GOP Senator has yet been willing to publicly speak up in agreement with Bob Corker. But what’s more important right now is that none of them are willing to speak at all. That silence stood out on Sunday, and became official when Wolf Blitzer announced on Monday that every Republican in the Senate had turned down an offer to appear on CNN that day.
The Republicans aren’t hanging Corker out to dry by remaining silent; they’re hanging Trump out to dry. Corker is saying the kinds of things that no sitting Senator in the modern era has ever publicly said about a president of his own party. This is an unprecedented development – yet not one of the other Republican Senators is willing to even partially defend Trump against Corker’s attacks. Sure, they’re letting Corker take the brunt of Trump’s retaliatory tantrums. But that’s the whole point, because Corker has nothing to lose and couldn’t care less about absorbing Trump’s barbs.
By remaining silent as Bob Corker continues to pound home the message that Donald Trump is psychologically unstable, along with the clear implication that he needs to be ousted from office, the other Republican Senators are allowing Corker’s message to take hold and become the de facto position of the party. If the GOP didn’t want Corker setting the stage for an eventual ouster, they’d be publicly pushing back against his message. Instead, they’re purposely letting him set that stage for them.
