Sunday on CNN’s ‘State of the Union,’ Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker discussed the “contrived” nature of the government shutdown fight and blamed President Trump for putting on a “spectacle” for political purposes.
“This is a purposely contrived fight,” the Tennessee Republican said. “No matter who wins, the border is still going to be insecure… This is a made up fight so the president can look like he is fighting. But even if he wins the borders are going to be insecure.”
“We can secure our borders, we can solve this problem, this is a made up fight.”
CNN’s Jake Tapper clarified: “You’re saying President Trump, if he wants that money for the border wall for border security, he can get it, but needs to make a deal. But he doesn’t want to make a deal. He just wants a campaign issue. Am I hearing you correctly?”
“It has to be that,” Corker explained. “This is like falling off a table. The Democrats easily would support more border funding, border security. They’ve said that. 25 of them came to the floor and voted for something that provided $25 billion worth of border security in exchange for dealing with the DREAMers. And Republicans want to deal with the DREAMers. This is something that is unnecessary. It’s a spectacle and, candidly, it’s juvenile. The whole thing is juvenile. I want to see real border security and that’s why I’m disappointed where we’ve ended up at the end of this Congress.”
CORKER: This is a made-up fight, so the president can look like he’s fighting. But, even if he wins, our borders are going to be insecure… The Democrats easily would support more border funding, border security. They have said that; 25 of them came to the floor and voted for something that provided $25 billion worth of border security, in exchange for dealing with the dreamers. And Republicans want to deal with the dreamers. So, this is something that is unnecessary. It’s a spectacle. And, candidly, it’s juvenile. The whole thing is juvenile. I want to see real border security. And that’s why I’m disappointed at where we have ended up at the end of this Congress.
