Trump Mocks Senators Who Attacked His White House Performance

U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday mocked two Republican senators who sharply criticized his White House performance, saying the "very simple" reason they are retiring is that they "had zero chance" of being re-elected.

Trump, in Twitter comments, said Senators Jeff Flake of Arizona and Bob Corker of Tennessee "now act so hurt & wounded!"

The U.S. leader said that "outside of Flake and Corker," his Capitol Hill meeting Tuesday with the Senate majority Republicans "was a love fest with standing ovations and great ideas for USA!"

Trump discounted that Flake, "with an 18% approval rating in Arizona," had said that other senators had privately voiced their own concerns about Trump, saying, "Really, they just gave me a standing O!"

He said Republican lawmakers are "working hard on the biggest tax cut in U.S. history. Great support from so many sides. Big winners will be the middle class, business & JOBS."

Trump's rebuke of Flake and Corker came a day after both lawmakers had offered a brutal commentary on the the first nine months of his presidency.

Flake, in a speech on the Senate floor, announced he would not seek another six-year term in the November 2018 elections, then slammed Trump's behavior as “dangerous to our democracy” and called on other Republicans to denounce the president’s conduct.

“It is time for our complicity and our accommodation of the unacceptable to end,” Flake said. “Politics can make us silent when we should speak, and silence can equal complicity.”

He added, “We must never regard as normal the regular and casual undermining of our democratic norms and ideals. We must never meekly accept the daily sundering of our country — the personal attacks; the threats against principles, freedoms and institutions; the flagrant disregard for truth and decency.”

His speech came after Corker and Trump traded taunts for hours.

"I think standing up in front of the American people and stating untruths that everybody knows to be untrue, attempted bullying that he does which everybody sees through, just the dividing of our country, the name-callings, for young people to be watching, not only here in our country but around the world, someone of this mentality as president of the United States is something that is I think debasing to our country," Corker said. "You would think he would aspire to be the president of the United States and act like a president of the United States.

"But that's just not going to be the case, apparently," Corker concluded.

In one of several Twitter comments about Corker, Trump said he "couldn't get elected dog catcher in Tennessee," calling him a "lightweight" and "the incompetent head of the Foreign Relations Committee."

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Flake’s and Corker’s comments were “petty.” She boasted that Trump was more popular in Arizona and Tennessee, both states he carried in 2016, than the two departing senators.

“The voters of these individual senators’ states are speaking in pretty loud volumes,” Sanders said. “I think that they were not likely to be reelected, and I think that shows that the support is more behind this president than it is those two individuals.”

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