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- Republican Sen. Bob Corker unleashed on President Donald Trump after the president criticized and demeaned him on Twitter on Tuesday morning.
- Corker said Trump "has great difficulty with the truth" and said he regretted supporting him in the 2016 election.
- He added, "the debasement of our nation is what [Trump] will be remembered most for."
Republican Sen. Bob Corker unleashed on President Donald Trump after the president criticized and demeaned him on Twitter on Tuesday morning, telling CNN that there is "no way" he would support the president again in an election.
"I think the debasing of our nation, the constant non-truth telling, the name-calling - I think the debasement of our nation is what he will be remembered most for," Corker told CNN of Trump.
Corker has been increasingly vocal about his frustrations with Trump since he announced that he'll be retiring from the Senate in 2018. Corker, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has recently said that he worries the president could start World War III.
He hinted in his CNN interview that he has now lost hope that Trump can turn things around.
"I've intervened, I've had a private dinner, I've been with him on multiple occasions to try to create some kind of aspirational approach, if you will, to the way that he conducts himself," Corker said in his CNN interview Tuesday. "But I don't think that that's possible and he's obviously not going to rise to the occasion as president."
Trump lashed out at Corker shortly after the powerful Tennessee lawmaker criticized the White House's involvement in Congress' tax reform efforts in a morning TV interview.
"Bob Corker, who helped President O give us the bad Iran Deal & couldn't get elected dog catcher in Tennessee, is now fighting Tax Cuts," Trump wrote on Tuesday morning. "Corker dropped out of the race in Tennesse when I refused to endorse him, and now is only negative on anything Trump. Look at his record!"
Corker responded to the president on Twitter, writing, "Same untruths from an utterly untruthful president #AlertTheDaycareStaff."
The senator was referring to a tweet he wrote earlier this month calling the White House an "adult day care center." Corker has also said recently that the president is pushing the country towards "World War III."
In an interview on CNN later in the morning, Corker said that Trump "has great difficulty with the truth on many issues" and consistently spreads "provable untruths."
"Nothing that he said in his tweets today were truthful or accurate and he knows it and people around him know it," Corker told CNN. "I would hope the staff over there would figure out ways of controlling him when they know everything he said today was absolutely untrue."
Corker added that Trump encouraged him to run for reelection and said that he would endorse the senator four times before Corker ultimately decided to give up the seat he's held since 2007.