Welcome to the daily standard podcast. I'm Eric Felton. I'm joined today by Mr. Michael Warren White House correspondent for the weekly standard and senior writer Michael, how are you doing?
Why are you here instead of home celebrating indigenous people's day? Well, you know, it's solidarity with the working men and women of the country. That's why I'm here. Excellent.
Excellent. If we can call what we do work It's you mean, it's it's not work covering this White House. It's not work if you love it It's not work if it's your passion. All right, so we're gonna start on the legislative priorities on immigration that you write about in today's White House Watch the The unmissable White House Watch Sign up, sign up, be sure to sign up.
So Sunday the president's team puts out a list of legislative priorities on immigration. What were they? Well, there'll be no surprise to anybody who's followed the Trump campaign or even the Trump White House's rhetoric on immigration It's basically they identify three problems problem with border security a problem with internal enforcement of immigration and a problem with a system that is sort of based on or Sort of animated by family chain migration, which is you know You you get here and you bring you can bring basically anybody who's related to you directly And then they bring whoever's related to them right who brings anyone who's related to them right? So these are the three problems and then the solutions that the legislative priorities that the administration is pushing for Are you know funding for a border wall more resources for ice?
Immigration's immigration customs enforcement to find people who are here illegally and and deport them who are here internally within the country not just at the border and reforming the immigration system to Reward or award immigration status legal immigration status based on merit So it's kind of a big that's kind of a big menu of priorities and to hear the Democrats tell it This was not the deal. They thought they had with the White House on on the DACA That's right So yeah, we should clarify that this is the list of things that the administration has released are sort of their list of priorities that They are insisting on or saying must come with any kind of fix for DACA for the dreamers those Kids although they're not kids anymore for the most part the people who were brought here as children through no fault of their own By their parents who were illegal immigrants protecting them so that they aren't deported to countries that that they don't even really know because they were Right here as children. So that is not what the Democrats and it's Pelosi and Chuck Schumer thought they were getting us At least not what they say this is when they famously had met with with President Trump and came away thinking they had a deal for him supporting Them making DACA a permanent legislative fix as opposed to merely a presidential executive order right and this was something that they said They were willing to give on some you know border security funding that the Democrats were they say that the wall was never a part of that deal And and that the administration's insistence on the wall is essentially They accuse the president's staff in the West Wing of acting in bad faith. They don't say so the president So that's kind of where we are.
So supposedly the deal with Chuck and Nancy is dead at least as long as the administration is insisting on a border wall The whether or not this was ever a likely deal to go through I was I was always kind of skeptical, but one thing that that deal did I think reveal was that was that Trump In person when you can get him one-on-one as Chuck and Nancy were that he's a little more pliable He's famously you know willing to kind of go with whoever he last talked to right people in his business career would talk about how They would position themselves outside his office to make sure that they were the last person he talked to about any decision He was going to make that's right. And he's also Looks at the person sitting in front of them and if they offer what sounds to him like a good deal He's willing to take it that seems to be what happened with Chuck and Nancy and People within his staff were of course resistant to this chiefly among them is Steven Miller who's the sort of immigration Economic nationalist guru within the White House the last band and I didn't exactly well in fact I would argue he sort of supersedes man in a way he's Much he's much more sort of internally aligned with the power brokers who remain in the White House people like Jared Kushner And but he's also sort of he's a true believer in the Jeff Sessions Well, of course Jeff Sessions was Steven Miller's former plus in the United States Senate This is something that Miller I think is sort of I would not say unilaterally But he's certainly leading the charge to pull back from the Chuck and Nancy deal now You hear you have the the presentation over the weekend of a set of legislative priorities But it didn't seem to be what was on the mind of the president who was engaged in yet another Twitter storm back and forth this time with senator Bob Corker what got this going in the first instance? And how did it develop well we could go back a long ways to go back really how it got here But in the short term, let's just start with last Wednesday It was sort of in the wake of this news that Rex Tillerson had called the president Amoron actually He's I believe he said I'm effing moron and I am I am censoring myself there Rex Tillerson the secretary of state and that prompted reporters to start asking senators questions as they were want to do about this report And Bob Corker kind of unloaded and he said uncorked. Yeah, he was uncorked if you will And he basically said something to be the effect of Tillerson along with Jim Mattis at the Pentagon and John Kelly the chief of staff I was actually holding the line in containing the chaos.
I believe was the phrase he used Suggesting that it was the president was that chaos and that Tillerson was among those who were sort of the adults in the room I think is another way he framed it and then when pressed about this Corker's like yeah, I was talking about the president He's the source of the chaos. So that'll happen kind of midweek last week And of course the media loved to talk about this is a great story Republican senator And actually a former allies. They were one of the Republican senators who's been really reticent in the last eight months to criticize Trump So sort of hearing this now from him is great media story You know that the party going after each other and I think it the president stood on this until Sunday morning When he that's when he unleashed the tweets. It's actually kind of a long for a Trump Sort of long gestation.
That's right now a normal president presented with a member of a senior member of his own party Dissing him in this way might have deflected by saying something like I agree with senator Corker that my foreign policy team is Excellent, right, you know something like that You put it you respond to it in a way that deflects it and puts it away and you don't dane to Engage with it, right? This is not the style of the counter punching president. No, absolutely not I should say before we get into that that it's unusual for any Senior or junior member is particularly a senator to engage like this with the president of their own party Corker's not the first to do it. He's sort of the first as I said in my house watch kind of bulwark it sort of Just no holds barred tell everybody what what he thinks about it, but I do think that yeah So the president's tweets on Sunday morning are essentially Essentially dragging this out more, you know saying things like Corker of course we should we should be quick to note that Corker is announced recently that he's retiring in 2018 Will not be seeking reelection 2018 He wasn't speaking truth to power when it mattered for his political career right in Trump sort of played with this a little bit He sort of suggested that Corker was jealous because he wasn't going to get the Get the support from Trump that he was begging for begging for an endorsement right begging for the endorsement that he was never going to get and that's a reason why he Why he retired because he couldn't get the support of Trump of course now that the Corker folks Secretary of State.
Yeah, that's right the secretary So which is true and also one to be the vice president at one point withdrew back in July of 2016 from from consideration But yeah, so the president sort of egg demand then Corker responded on Twitter I mean, this is getting really kind of juvenile and where I have to read the exact text of the Corker response sure go ahead Which is it's a shame the White House has become an adult daycare center someone obviously missed their shift this morning I mean, it's it's really it's breathtaking if you think about this is a senior member of the president's own party That's right in the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee Again, one of the things Trump criticized before was bringing us the Iran deal Which I think there's a lot of truth to what Trump said you look at the legislation that basically allowed this to the Iran deal to Go through and to get congressional support. So yeah, so here we are now that we've got this kind of Pitched battle between these two. I think it's worth remembering though And I make this point on the website this morning in my newsletter that the thing is that Corker's criticizing Trump for right chaos for sort of Impetuousness for acting essentially like a child as his response on Sunday suggest you know, this is daycare Well, who's in daycare? I guess it's the president these are criticisms that Republicans were making throughout the 2016 primary And it was Bob Corker of all people who?
Was again as a senior member to term senator of the party was criticizing Republicans who were criticizing Trump saying Look, this is somebody the people are speaking here And we've got to respect the the will of the people going out of his way to criticize those were Ultimately on a feudal effort to deny Trump the nomination saying they need to get in line essentially I'm doing you know his sucking up to Trump when Trump was making big foreign policy speeches So there are two ways of looking at this one way is that Corker has no credibility having been a Trump suck up in the first instance The other way of looking at it is what's going on for Trump when he loses a suck up like Corker Yeah, that's a good point now Corker says that this is what all Republican senators are saying privately behind closed doors I actually don't doubt that I think that's I think I've heard that from from Republican senators I mean Republican senators have to be concerned that at any point the president might consider them a target of a Twitter storm That's right, which is why they're not saying it and of course you can say well, they're sort of being spineless about it They're not saying what they want, but Look, I do think that it's it is not a coincidence that Corker is getting uncorked after he's announced his retirement I think the fact that he's basically fallen out of favor with the president for any sort of job like secretary of state of Tillerson We're gonna leave But what I would say to all that says the criticisms of Trump that Corker is making Are were are about Trump's character right or about Trump's ability to do the job of president And you know, they're not about policy actually they're about they're about character And this was the argument that many Republicans were making As Trump was not just winning in primaries, but getting the support of establishment Republicans all throughout the spring Mid and late spring of 2016 and Corker was a part of that And so the question really is what has changed Has Trump changed has it just gone on too long or or has Corker's calculation of Sort of his own position within the party Is you know, is he setting himself up to be I mean he's After all the sunday, you know morning Twitter's you know back and forth Corker took an interview with the New York Times and he's got a great big interview with the Times and what she continues to Dump on the president. You do have to wonder Is this a little bit more than self-serving on Corker's part Irrespective of whether or not his criticisms are a valid of Trump I think you have to go back and look at his comments in 2016 and I think I can tell you a lot Michael Warren author of the White House watch at weekly standard calm be sure to check it out every day Michael Warren, thanks so much for joining us on the daily standard podcast. Thanks Eric