{"id":126714,"date":"2017-10-26T04:13:38","date_gmt":"2017-10-26T08:13:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=126714"},"modified":"2017-10-26T04:13:38","modified_gmt":"2017-10-26T08:13:38","slug":"tennessees-corker-doubles-down-on-his-criticism-of-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2017\/10\/26\/tennessees-corker-doubles-down-on-his-criticism-of-trump\/","title":{"rendered":"Tennessee’s Corker doubles down on his criticism of Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Taking<\/a>
Taking on a crowd of jeering union workers, standing up to a charismatic Democratic opponent on the man’s home turf or lecturing upper management of one of the world’s largest corporations, Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker has rarely backed down from a fight. (Photo<\/a> by U.S. Embassy Moldova\/Flickr<\/a>, CC BY-ND 2.0<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

NASHVILLE \u2014 Taking on a crowd of jeering union workers, standing up to a charismatic Democratic opponent on the man’s home turf or lecturing upper management of one of the world’s largest corporations, Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker has rarely backed down from a fight.<\/p>\n

So it came as little surprise to those who know him well that the pugnacious self-made multimillionaire who once floated his own name as a 2016 Republican presidential candidate doubled down this week on his criticism of President Donald\u00a0Trump, calling him \u201cutterly untruthful\u201d and responsible for \u201cthe debasement of our nation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf he feels something isn’t right, he’s going to say that,\u201d said Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam, who has known Corker since he was a teenager.<\/p>\n

Corker, 65, did, in fact, back down from a potentially serious primary fight last month when he announced he would not run for re-election, though he insisted he did so from a position of strength.<\/p>\n

While he had clashed with\u00a0Trump\u00a0even before the announcement, it seemed to liberate him altogether to speak candidly about the president, which he did early this month, when he charged that\u00a0Trump\u00a0had turned the White House into an \u201cadult day care centre\u201d and was setting the U.S. \u201con the path to World War III.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump\u00a0hit back at Corker as a \u201clightweight\u201d and charged that the former Chattanooga mayor and two-term senator \u201ccouldn’t get elected dog catcher in Tennessee.\u201d\u00a0Trump\u00a0insultingly dubbed him \u201cLiddle Bob Corker.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jokes about Corker’s diminutive stature \u2014 he lists his height as 5-foot-7 \u2014 are hardly going to get a rise out of someone who has been hearing them at least since the former construction company owner first ran for the Senate in 1994.<\/p>\n

That crowded primary was ultimately won by Bill Frist, a Nashville physician whose campaign labeled Corker a \u201cdesperate little man,\u201d \u201cthe Chattanooga boo-hoo\u201d and \u201crotten pond scum.\u201d Much of that vitriol stemmed from Corker’s pointing out Frist’s spotty voting record and calling him a cat killer for adopting felines and using them for experiments while he was a medical student.<\/p>\n

Corker was next appointed state finance commissioner, where he broke with others in the GOP administration by supporting an ultimately successful effort by then-Nashville Mayor Phil Bredesen, a Democrat, to bring the NFL’s Houston Oilers to Tennessee. Bredesen was later elected governor and is now mulling a bid to succeed Corker in the Senate.<\/p>\n

Bredesen, in announcing his interest in the race, lauded Corker’s service despite some differences over policy.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have long admired the way in which he puts the interests of Tennesseans and our nation ahead of political gamesmanship,\u201d Bredesen said. \u201cHe educates himself on the issues and thinks independently about them, in exactly the way the founders of our nation intended.\u201d<\/p>\n

Following a single term as Chattanooga mayor, Croker made another run for the Senate in 2006 after Frist announced his retirement. Corker won by less than 3 percentage points, in part because of the fallout from Democrat Harold Ford Jr.’s attempts to confront him with the media in tow in Memphis, the politically powerful Ford family’s home base.<\/p>\n

In what Corker’s campaign dubbed the \u201cMemphis Meltdown,\u201d the Republican met Ford head-on, telling him, \u201cIt’s a true sign of desperation that you would pull your bus up when I’m having a press conference.\u201d<\/p>\n

By 2014, he had risen to become chairman of the powerful Senate Finance Committee. He ended up sitting out the 2016 presidential race and refused to endorse any of the Republican candidates until\u00a0Trumphad won Tennessee’s Super Tuesday primary.<\/p>\n

On a weekend mountain hike, Corker was confronted by Pulitzer Prize-winning author David George Haskell for supporting\u00a0Trump.\u00a0Corker challenged Haskell, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Britain, to explain what he has \u201cever done to contribute to the state,\u201d adding: \u201cIf you don’t like it, leave,\u201d according to Haskell.<\/p>\n

The senator subsequently found himself in the\u00a0Trump\u00a0orbit, considered for both vice-president and secretary of state but ending up with neither post. The two have different versions of who initiated those conversations.<\/p>\n

Corker studied industrial management at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, working in construction in the summer and after graduation and using the $8,000 he saved to start his own company with a single pickup truck. He hit it big when he won the contract to build drive-thru windows for the Krystal fast-food chain.<\/p>\n

At a celebratory 2011 event to announce a return to production at a General Motors plant on the outskirts of Nashville, Corker was mercilessly heckled by hundreds of members of the United Auto Workers union who blamed the plant’s shutdown on his opposition to the 2009 auto-industry bailout.<\/p>\n

Corker stared down the crowd and endured the jeers for 20 seconds.<\/p>\n

\u201cI see the saga continues,\u201d he finally said, acknowledging past disagreements with the union. \u201cI can tell today that that’s fine with you. And it’s fine with me.\u201d<\/p>\n

The senator later took a lead role in working to defeat the UAW in a union election at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga in 2014. And he warned Volkswagen managers in Germany that they would become a \u201claughingstock\u201d if the union won the vote.<\/p>\n

He appeared to revel in the union’s efforts to vilify him.<\/p>\n

\u201cI probably am Public Enemy No. 1 for the UAW,\u201d he said with no hint of regret.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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