President Trump arrived on Capitol Hill Tuesday afternoon to a gaggle of reporters – and one very loud protester who pretended to be a reporter in order to call the president a traitor to his face.
Trump walked alongside Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., as the two top Republicans scurried into the weekly Senate policy luncheon, as the president hopes to boost support for his tax cuts.
However his morning was marred by his renewed fight with Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., a former supporter of the president who on CNN today answered ‘no, no way,’ when asked if he’d support Trump again.
Corker also made the stunning assertion that the president ‘debases our country’ by constantly telling ‘untruths.’
DailyMail.com spotted Corker heading into the luncheon, which means the two men will be face-to-face for the hour.
But before that, Trump was met with a handful of Russian flags, thrown at him by the man who had infiltrated the press.
‘Why are they talking about tax cuts when they should be talking about treason? This president conspired with agents of the Russian government to steal an election! We should be talking about treason in Congress, not about tax cuts!’ said the man, who DailyMail.com identified as Ryan Clayton from Americans Take Action.
Protester Ryan Clayton is removed from the Capitol Building Tuesday after screaming at President Trump when he arrived for the weekly Senate policy luncheon
President Trump (right) arrives at the Senate policy luncheon alongside Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. Trump was heckled by a protester as he walked in
President Trump waves at the hundreds of journalists gathered on Capitol Hill to document his arrival Tuesday
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (left) walks alongside President Trump (right) as the GOP president arrives at his party’s policy luncheon, on the same day the president renewed a feud with Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee
Clayton was removed by U.S. Capitol Police.
Clayton has pretended to be a reporter and tried to get the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner to sign a Russian flag in the past.
He also showed up to the Conservative Political Action Conference earlier this year and tried a similar trick.
Corker told CNN he would be attending anyway because ‘It’s my lunch.’
He said he regrets supporting Trump and that the president has proved himself ‘unable to rise to the occasion.’
Putting the best face on the spat, Speaker Paul Ryan said Tuesday: ‘I’m glad the president’s coming to lunch because I have long believed that it’s best to settle these things in person and I hope they can get the chance to do that.’
Also attending will be North Carolina Richard Burr, who is in the midst of a probe of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
‘I go to a policy lunch every week,’ Burr told the Hill. ‘I’m going to be in a body of colleagues. I don’t think it’s improper to go to a regularly scheduled lunch.’
Also expected is Sen. John McCain, who in a recent documentary blasted people who got out of Vietnam with a ‘bone spur.’
(Trump got medical deferments that referenced his bone spurs and avoided service.)
Seated nearby will be Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake, who harshly criticized his own party in his recent book. ‘Never has a party so quickly or so easily abandoned its principles as my party did during the 2016 campaign,’ he wrote.
Trump’s former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon has already publicly backed Flake’s primary opponent.
‘The debasement of our nation will be what he’ll remembered most for and that’s regretful,’ Sen Bob Corker said in an interview on CNN
Trump hopes to work with the same Republicans he has clashed with in order to overhaul the tax code.
It will be Trump’s first appearance as president at Senate Republicans’ regular Tuesday policy lunch at the Capitol. The gathering has the potential for awkward moments, because it follows spats between Trump and GOP senators such as John McCain of Arizona and Bob Corker of Tennessee, as well as Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.
McConnell and Trump had a joint news conference last week to announce they had smoothed things over and underscore their common focus on taxes. But Trump’s comments at that event spawned the controversy over his treatment of fallen U.S. troops, underscoring how the president’s lack of discipline repeatedly takes the White House off-message, a continuing frustration for members of Congress.
Trump has said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell couldn’t ‘get it done’ on health care
Nonetheless, Republicans and the Trump administration are determined to get tax legislation into law this year, and all sides seem to think they can unite around that goal.
Corker told NBC’s “Today” on Tuesday that he hopes the White House will “step aside” and give the House and Senate tax-writing committees room to figure out how to pay for the tax cuts. Corker, who has publicly criticized the president’s job performance, suggested that recent decisions by the White House have been unhelpful. In a tweet on Monday, Trump ruled out changes to popular 401(k) retirement plans to help pay for the tax cuts.
Asked whether his recommendation to the president would be to leave well enough alone, Corker said: “I would recommend that, based on recent history and just interactions. And I think that’s the best way for us to have success.”
Republican Arizona Senator John McCain has clashed with Trump and brought up his Vietnam War deferments
No. 3 Senate Republican John Thune of South Dakota said he hopes to hear Trump “drive home the message that he wants to be a partner, a constructive partner that helps us get accomplishments that help everybody.”
“If you have people who are running for re-election next year, whether it’s a House member or one of the senators who’s up this year, I think the best thing you can go back and talk about is that you got results,” Thune added. “And I think that to the degree the president delivers that message it will be very well received by Republican senators.”
Corker, who is retiring, recently suggested that Trump’s undisciplined rhetoric about international affairs could lead to World War III, leading an angry Trump to dismiss him as “Liddle Bob Corker.” McCain implicitly criticized Trump on Monday, though not by name, for getting a draft deferment during Vietnam for bone spurs in his foot. And Trump spent much of August lashing out at McConnell and blaming him for the Senate’s failure to pass legislation to repeal and replace “Obamacare.”
The tax plan crafted by Trump and Republican leaders calls for steep tax cuts for corporations and potentially for individuals. It would double the standard deduction used by most Americans, shrink the number of tax brackets from seven to three or four, and repeal inheritance taxes on multimillion-dollar estates. But crucial details of the plan have yet to be worked out, notably what income levels would fit with each tax bracket.