When Bob Corker went to Trump Tower in late November to interview for secretary of state, the disruptive new president and his team were not just idly talking about a potentially explosive start to the new administration. Corker, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, reveals in an interview that Trump in fact planned to order the U.S. Embassy in Israel moved to Jerusalem immediately after his inauguration—a decision that could set off a regional diplomatic crisis and poison his relationship with the Arab world from Day One.
“They were ready to move the embassy at 12:01 on Jan. 20, maybe 12 and 30 seconds,” Corker says in a nearly hour-long conversation for our new podcast, The Global Politico. “That was going to be their first move.”
As reality has collided with the Trump presidency, the shift that had Israel and the Arab world bracing for a possible new round of violence hasn’t happened so far and the president who campaigned on making the move to demonstrate his pro-Israel bona fides has now said publicly it’s “not an easy decision.” But as with many of Trump’s plans to reorient American foreign policy, that doesn’t mean it won’t. He may still order the U.S. Embassy to the disputed capital, Corker says, but only after hearing objections from Arab allies as well as his face-to-face meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington this week. “My sense is, they’re probably still moving there.”
The story of the embassy move that isn’t—yet—highlights the uncertainty that surrounds Trump’s presidency when it comes to turning his blustery pronouncements into actual American foreign policy. Would-be Republican allies on Capitol Hill like Corker hold out hope of exerting real influence over the new administration’s moves and see “evolution” in Trump’s embassy delay and other early moves like his about-face reaffirming America’s “One China” policy after flirting with Taiwan. But even those most ready to do business with Trump have been rattled by his unpredictability, contradictory statements and angry outbursts.
Trump, Corker says when we meet in his Senate office for his first extensive interview about the new administration, is a “wrecking ball” when it comes to longstanding American foreign policy, a newcomer to the burdensome demands of being the world’s lone superpower who remains determined “to just destroy everything about” the U.S. establishment’s view of the world.
Trump also happens to disagree with Corker and many other Republicans in Congress on a host of the most pressing global issues, from Vladimir Putin’s Russia and the role of NATO to international trade deals whose most ardent backers have up until now been the GOP leaders on Capitol Hill. In effect, he’s a Republican president with a very un-Republican foreign policy, and he’s outlined a set of global shifts that are not only at odds with GOP orthodoxy but often in conflict with each other.
Something, Corker says, has got to give: “The challenge is going to be… so you want to do deals, deals, deals. Or you want to disrupt this and this and this. You’ve got to decide toward what end.”
But Trump is not the only one facing a tough decision.
Not only are the Democrats divided and demoralized by having to figure out how to navigate a world with Trump as president, but the Republican dance is, if anything, more complicated, politically fraught—and personally challenging for senators who virtually every day now are forced to decide whether a White House run by their own party has so offended their core beliefs that they need to speak out in opposition or are better off trying to work behind the scenes to try to influence Trump and his small coterie of insiders.
Republican Senators John McCain and his wingman Lindsey Graham are waging a public war of press releases against what they see as Trump’s dangerous challenge to America’s role in the world. McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has so far criticized Trump publicly on a proposed torture executive order, considering lifting sanctions on Russia, his temporary refugee ban, and the apparently botched U.S. special forces raid in Yemen—putting him in a running smackdown with the president on Twitter and cable TV.
But Corker, who has made it his mission as chairman to reinsert Congress in foreign policy decisions from which the Hill has increasingly been cut out in recent decades, is eager to find another course.
“I wish some of the things that were said and tweeted didn’t happen,” he says, and he was quicker than many Hill Republicans to publicly criticize Trump’s “poorly implemented” temporary refugee ban (a statement that drew an angry phone call from the White House within 20 minutes of him issuing it on a Sunday afternoon, Corker says). Still, he insists there are glimmers of hope that could be converted into a course of action by Republicans in Congress. Rather than turning their fire on a prickly president who clearly takes criticism personally, holds a grudge and rarely backs away from a fight, Corker is arguing in the backstage councils of Capitol Hill that they should seek to influence Trump more quietly.
“What I see happening is an evolution,” Corker tells me, ticking off a list of issues like the embassy move, the U.S. commitment to NATO, and sanctions on Russia where Trump has not yet moved forward despite public vows to proceed in a disruptive fashion. “We should attempt… to take those nuggets that are real and help as a Senate evolve them into a policy that is positive,” Corker says. “It’s taking nuggets, massaging them to a little bit different place.”
So far, though, Corker’s not been making deals with Trump so much as massaging bruised egos and reassuring worried leaders from around the world, like the Australian ambassador to the United States whom Corker and other congressional Republicans took the unusual step of calling after reports of Trump’s belligerent phone call with the Australian prime minister. Trump cleanup duty has also involved meeting with anxious allies like Jordan’s King Abdullah and the Canadian and German foreign ministers, in town looking for clues to navigating the new Trump Washington.
Were they “scared to death,” as former Secretary of State Jim Baker observed in the inaugural edition of The Global Politico? Yes, says Corker. “They’re shaken up by some of what’s happening and wondering how they should approach us and the administration.”
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Batting cleanup for Trump’s tweets and angry telephone rants with foreign leaders was not the role Corker at one point envisioned for himself in the Trump era.
Corker, a businessman and former Chattanooga mayor seen as one of the Senate GOP’s more pragmatic members, is the kind of conservative who nonetheless is willing to talk to Democrats in the interests of dealmaking; he’s also become a real student of foreign policy. In other words, he’s an increasingly rare species on Capitol Hill, and he largely stayed out of the divisive 2016 presidential race. He never formally endorsed Trump but he wasn’t a #NeverTrumper either – and he even met Trump briefly to discuss the vice presidential nod before withdrawing from consideration. In the fall, he joined in the chorus of criticism after the “Access Hollywood” tape became public, saying an apology was in order.
Soon after Trump’s election upset, Corker ended up on the short list for secretary of state, pushed by fellow senators who saw him as confirmable when compared with bombthrowers like Rudy Giuliani and John Bolton also in the mix, and he was summoned to the gilded tower in New York for a Tuesday, Nov. 29 meeting with Trump and key advisers like Vice President Mike Pence and chief ideologist Steve Bannon.
At the interview, Corker found himself doing a quick survey of global hot spots with the president-elect. They disagreed about virtually everything, as Corker describes it: “Yes, we went around the world. I did find myself in most cases – in almost every case but maybe one – offering an alternative view,” Corker says of his conversation with Trump.
Participating in Trump’s reality-show contest for the job, which ultimately went to ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson, was clearly a bruising experience. Conservative websites attacked Corker for not sufficiently opposing President Obama’s Iran deal; they argued he had in fact facilitated its passage by the procedural way it was handled in the Senate, a charge he insists in our interview is nonsense (“it’s almost as if some people want to make things up”). The conservative Daily Caller website even reported he had not won the job because the looks-obsessed new president considered him of insufficient stature for the post (though another site pointed out that Corker, at 5’7’’, is in fact the same height as Vladimir Putin
Regardless of the real reason he didn’t get the nod, Corker, like many Republicans, disagrees strongly with Trump on key foreign policy issues. The matter of what to do about Russia, and in particular Trump’s persistent compliments for its tough-guy leader, is perhaps most vexing.
“The Russia issue is the one that has most unsettled people,” Corker says, and he wants to make clear that no matter what Trump says, “I do not see Russia as a friend of the United States in any form or fashion.”
So what’s up with the Trump-Putin mutual admiration society? Corker says he thinks the American president does in fact have “a degree of admiration for a strongman. I’m sorry. I think that part is somewhat real,” though he argues that the allure of a new friendly relationship with Russia may be as much about Trump’s expansive self-perception as a figure who can achieve what other American presidents have not.
Still, he fears that his colleagues like McCain and Graham, though he doesn’t name them, will end up fighting ineffectively with Trump by challenging him frontally. “Is that really the best way to approach a double-down kind of president? Or is it best to help the team and others evolve to a different place? Is that a better approach? That’s the approach right now that I’m taking.”
But like the rest of Washington, Corker is still figuring out who’s actually in charge in the Trump White House and how to get things done given the multiple power centers that seem to be shaping foreign policy. A case study: Just last week, newly sworn-in Secretary of State Tillerson brought his choice for deputy, veteran Republican foreign policy hand and well-known neocon Elliott Abrams, to the White House to have him meet Trump for an appointment that seemed settled. According to several sources with whom I’ve spoken, the Abrams choice, pushed by both Tillerson and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, had been held up for weeks by objections from Bannon – and was ultimately nixed by the president after Trump was reminded of Abrams’s critical statements about him during the campaign.
As for the national security adviser, many in the Washington foreign policy world – in both parties – have been deeply suspicious of Trump’s reliance on Mike Flynn, the hawkish anti-Iran and seemingly pro-Russian former general whose potentially improper pre-inauguration discussions with the Russian ambassador are being investigated. But the establishment has worried not only about his Russia ties but also his fundamental competence and fitness for the job, blaming him for contributing to the disarray and confusion of the administration’s early days with a lack of clear staffing and organization and a paranoid culture in which professionals are being kept out of key national security decisions.
Still, Corker met with Flynn at the White House a few days before our interview and came away with a different view than he expected.
“Look, I see a person who’s setting up shop much like Brent Scowcroft did,” Corker says, invoking the mild-mannered former military man revered by the foreign policy set for his disciplined, well-ordered tenure as George H.W. Bush’s national security adviser during the tumultuous period of the end of the Cold War. “It’s not what people thought, where he was going to be an autocrat,” Corker adds, seeing early signs of Flynn “taking input” from Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Tillerson and “creating a real interagency process.”
But then again, Corker, like the rest of us, doesn’t really know yet.
That becomes clear once again when we turn back to the question of Iran. On the campaign trail, Trump had ranted against the nuclear deal and suggested repeatedly that one of his first orders of business would be to blow it up. But that’s a course not even favored these days by the Republicans on Capitol Hill and Israelis like Netanyahu, who had been its staunchest foes while Obama was pushing it.
Will Trump go along with what even his would-be supporters think is the wisest course, of pressuring the Iranians rather than walking away from the agreement? Corker is hoping. “Instead of self-creating a crisis by just abrogating the deal… I think they’re going to move along,” he tells me.
But is he sure? With Trump already emerging as a president unlike any other, is anyone?