Sen. Bob Corker, R-Lame Duck, Tenn., recently gave an explosive 25-minute interview to The New York Times describing the president as being in need of constant supervision who is liable to get us into World War III. Great. He said, among other things: “Look, except for a few people, the vast majority of our caucus understands what we’re dealing with here . . . of course they understand the volatility that we’re dealing with and the tremendous amount of work that it takes by people around him to keep him in the middle of the road.”
A rough summary of his comments follows.
- - -
The president? Oh, no, he’s totally unfit. I am terrified for this country. Everyone in the Senate agrees. That is why we have, so far, not really said or done anything to contradict his agenda (except by a margin of one or two harrowing votes after receiving approximately 1,850,000 irate phone calls apiece).
But you have to understand: We are all constantly terrified. We all should be terrified. It’s even worse than you realize. Picture what you think it is, and then light it on fire and toss rusty nails and loose plague rats everywhere.
Listen, this is a living nightmare. The president no longer speaks in complete sentences, if he ever did. The last time we visited together he was gnawing on what appeared to be a severed human leg. You know that painting of Saturn devouring his children? That’s his bedtime ritual.
Chief of Staff John Kelly is very faint and weak because he doesn’t know what would happen if he ever slept when the president was awake. He is squatting on top of a giant throne of empty Red Bulls hissing at anyone who approaches, and he is still the sanest man in the building. I don’t know how much longer he can stay awake, or what will happen when he shuts his eyes.
The last time I visited the White House, they had put those little plastic things in all the sockets, and when I casually went to plug in my cellphone, three different aides screamed at me not to touch anything because of “what happened last time.” I don’t know what happened last time. After looking into an aide’s haunted eyes, I don’t think I ever want to know. I think the only thing that lets me sleep at night is that I have not seen what he has seen.
That is why I have voted with President Donald Trump more than 80 percent of the time.
Look, everyone in the Senate agrees. We all know how bad it is. Whole subcommittees have gone in on time-share bunkers together. World War III is a real possibility. Fortunately, the contractors who will supply weapons for World War III are in one of my colleagues’ home state, and the individuals whose charred, bleeding hands will supply arrows and stones for World War IV are in all of our states. So there’s a slim upside there, I guess. But we know by what a pathetically thin thread the country is hanging. We all know.
The Senate halls are full of screaming all the time because we are so afraid, so so afraid. We scream from morning until night until our throats are raw. We scream from the moment we arrive in the morning until the second someone turns on a camera so that we can make a statement offering the president our public support.
But the strain is unbearable. We can’t live like this. I am just saying what we long have thought. Everyone agrees with me, which you can tell from almost zero of their public actions and on-the-record statements, but trust me, we all have our eyes open to the full horror of it all.
It’s like being in Caligula’s court, except Caligula’s court had nice sculptures and sometimes you got to hang out with a horse. It’s like being trapped in a Tudor novel. I can’t read “Wolf Hall”; my hands just start shaking and shaking.
This is not normal. This is not okay. And I am doing what it takes: giving an interview to a media outlet stating my concerns! And uh, no that’s, that’s sort of it, but that’s doing something, I feel. It’s still more than anyone else has done.
For too long, this has been an open secret that no one does anything about, but now it will just be an open - thing that no one does anything about.
That’s progress, I think.