House Speaker Paul Ryan said Tuesday that Sen. Bob Corker would vote for Republican plans to overhaul the American tax system, but also called on he and President Donald Trump to put aside their escalating feud.
“I’m glad the President is coming to lunch, because I have long believed it’s best just to settle these things in person and I hope that they can get a chance to do that,” a clearly frustrated Ryan said at a news conference on Capitol Hill, referencing plans Trump has to dine with Senate Republicans later Tuesday.
Ryan insisted that the President’s Twitter fights will not affect Republicans’ goal of getting tax reform passed this year.
“So all this stuff you see on a daily basis, Twitter this and Twitter that, forget about it,” Ryan said. “At the end of the day, I know Bob well. Bob is going to vote for Tennessee, he’s going to vote for America, he’s going to vote for tax reform because he knows it’s best interest of Americans, so put this Twitter dispute aside.”
Ryan, who badly wants to keep the attention of Republican members of Congress focused on tax reform, was instead peppered with questions on the Corker-Trump spat.
“Isn’t it sad that lightweight Senator Bob Corker, who couldn’t get re-elected in the Great State of Tennessee, will now fight Tax Cuts plus!” Trump said, in one of several tweets about Corker he sent Tuesday.
Corker responded in an interview with CNN’s Manu Raju if he should have backed Trump’s presidential campaign, saying he “would not do that again.” He also said Trump has “great difficulty with the truth.”
“I think many of us, me included, have tried to, you know, intervene, and I have had a private dinner and have been with him on multiple occasions to try and create some kind of aspirational approach, if you will, to the way that he conducts himself,” Corker told CNN. “I don’t think that that’s possible. He’s obviously not going to rise to the occasion as president.”