Corker: Tillerson Is ‘Kneecapped’ By Trump’s Tweets

Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) said President Donald Trump had “kneecapped” Secretary State Rex Tillerson with his tweets.

Partial transcript as follows:

DICKERSON: Let me move to North Korea. You’ve been critical of the president and his tweets on this. What is the president doing to get in the way of the diplomacy you think should be happening?

CORKER: Yeah, so, let’s face it our greatest partner is China. We have a State Department and a secretary of state whose job is to exercise full diplomacy — to keep our men and women in uniform out of harm’s way. Every military leader wants the State Department and our secretary of state to be successful when they do that. When our secretary of state is sitting down with a partner that matters most, like China, trying to negotiate something that would resolve and keep us from going into military conflict with North Korea which brings in South Korea, Japan, Russia, and kneecapped by the president, it hurts our nation. It hurts our efforts. It leads us more fully towards the conflict that most of us would like to see resolved in another way.

The tweets that are sent out mocking a leader of another country raises tensions in the region. And so people are sitting there, they know they have got an erratic leader in North Korea, they lived with three erratic leaders. Actually, this is the third one then when we start exhibiting some of those same tendencies, it creates an air that leads again more fully towards conflict. What we need to be doing is supporting the efforts that secretary Tillerson and Secretary Mattis, who is involved in this diplomacy, are carrying out.

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