Media

Corker rails against the ‘tyranny of radio talk show hosts’ in slam on Limbaugh, Coulter

by Joe Concha - 12/21/18 5:13 PM ET

Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said Friday that conservative talk radio hosts were engaging in “tyranny,” criticism apparently aimed at figures such as Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter who pressed President Trump to only accept a spending deal that includes funding for a border wall.

“We have two talk-radio show hosts who basically influenced the president, and we’re in a shutdown mode. It’s just—that’s tyranny, isn’t it?” Corker said to reporters on Friday.

“Do we succumb to tyranny of talk-radio show hosts?” he continued. “I mean, this is a juvenile place we find ourselves. The reason we’re here is that we have a couple talk-radio hosts that get the president spun up.”

Earlier this week, the White House appeared to be ready to accept a stopgap spending bill without wall funding to keep the government running until Feb. 8. But after pointed criticism from nationally syndicated talk show host Rush Limbaugh and conservative columnist Ann Coulter warning how such a capitulation would play among his supporters, the president changed course, announcing he would veto any bill without wall funding.

{mosads}Trump declared Friday that he is prepared for a “very long shutdown” if Republicans and Democrats don’t agree to fund the wall along the border with Mexico. A spending measure including $5 billion in funding passed in the House on Thursday but does not have the necessary 60 votes to pass in the Senate, which had earlier passed the short-term funding bill by voice vote.

Coulter said in a podcast interview on Tuesday with The Daily Caller that she would not vote for Trump in 2020 “if the wall wasn’t built.”

“Why would you [vote for him again]?” the provocative author asked. “To make sure, I don’t know, Ivanka [Trump] and Jared [Kushner] can make money? That seems to be the main point of the presidency at this point,” Coulter responded.

“They’re about to have a country where no Republican will ever be elected president again,” she added. “Trump will just have been a joke presidency who scammed the American people, amused the populists for a while, but he’ll have no legacy whatsoever.”

Limbaugh on Wednesday also railed against the prospect of a spending bill without any money for the wall during his radio show.

“This is textbook. It’s a textbook example of what the drive-by media calls compromise: Trump gets nothing and the Democrats get everything, including control of the House in a few short weeks,” Limbaugh said.

The Florida-based radio host said the next day that Trump had told him he would reject any such measure.

“The president got word to me 20 minutes ago that if it comes back to him without money, if whatever happens in the House and Senate comes back to him with no allocation of $5 billion for the wall, then he’s going to veto it,” Limbaugh said on his program.

In an effort to avert a partial shutdown, Vice President Pence, incoming White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and White House adviser Jared Kushner met with Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Friday afternoon.

In a reversal from comments made with Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in the Oval Office last week, Trump on Friday blamed Democrats for the shutdown despite stating on Dec. 12 he would be “proud to shut down the government” in the name of border security.