Senator Bob Corker, one of the members of President Trump’s party who has fallen into several ugly confrontations with him, on Sunday declined to say whether he would prefer a Democratic president over Trump’s second term.
“I don’t want to speak to that yet,” he said on MSNBC of whether a Democrat would be better in the Oval Office the next time around. “Let’s see what happens a year from now.”
“I do think that we’ve got to remember what the Republican Party is,” Corker said when asked whether Trump should be “primaried.”
“I want to get away from here and think about it,” the Tennessee Republican continued. “This isn’t an every day in the hallway question, right?”
Corker, who announced his retirement last February after clashing with Trump, called the current administration an “anomaly” in the GOP.
“What is happening right now is not the standard Republicanism that we’ve had in our country for many, many years, and it’s very different,” he said. “So is it important for someone to get out there and at least remind people in the Republican primary what Republicans generally speaking have been about for generations? Which I think is important to remind people that we’re going through an anomaly right now as it relates to much of the standard Republican focus that’s been around for a long time.”
Corker has provoked Trump’s ire along with several other outspoken Republican critics, including Senator Jeff Flake, who is also retiring at the end of the 115th Congress.
The outgoing senator said the president governs with “anger” and “hate” and “tries to divide us.” He called the White House “an adult day-care center” last year after the president attacked him on Twitter.
“Bob Corker gave us the Iran Deal, & that’s about it,” Trump wrote. “We need HealthCare, we need Tax Cuts/Reform, we need people that can get the job done!”
Corker said in October that he is not ruling out running for president himself in 2020.
“It’s not something I want to focus on until I get out” of Congress, Corker said last month.