WASHINGTON (AP) — There was no dam break of Republican rancor against Donald Trump, a day after a pair of the party’s prominent senators denounced their president and invited colleagues to join them. Instead, most GOP lawmakers rallied around Trump and his agenda Wednesday, with one all but saying “good riddance” to Jeff Flake of Arizona and Bob Corker of Tennessee.
“Maybe we do better by having some of the people who just don’t like him leave, and replace them with somebody else,” Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma told The Associated Press. “And I think that’s what’s happening.”
Trump heartily agreed, declaring that both men were retiring because they couldn’t win re-election, and “I think I’m probably helped greatly in Arizona by what happened with Sen. Flake.”
Inhofe went further than most GOP lawmakers, but he had plenty of company in his refusal to echo the criticisms of Flake and Corker. Trump himself proclaimed he was leading a party unified in its pursuit of tax cut legislation.