Travel cost is widening. The price tag for their travel could amount to millions of dollars. And this from the New York Times, an extraordinary 20minute interview with senator bob corker as he unloads on the president , claiming he could set the nation on the path to World War Three and warning President Trump is not treating the office he is treating the office like a reality show. Were going to get to all of this in the course of the next three hours, and we want to begin with the president and senator corker and this feud that really unraveled over the weekend, your reaction to what senator corker has said and what the president has said. 2027488001, our line for republicans. 2027488000 for democrats. We have a line for independents at 2027488002. Join us on social media, send cspanwj. T at good monday morning to you. Heres how the story playing out in senator corkers head state. One headline, trump may trigger World War Three. What may have started this, comments this past wednesday by senator corker am hes now in his second term. He announced he will not seek a third term. He is the chair of the Senate Foreign relations committee, which oversees not only the state department, but key policy matters for president s, and he said this last wednesday on capitol hill. Senator corker i think secretary tillerson, secretary mattis, and chief of staff kelly are those people that help separate our country from chaos. I support him very much, and i dont know what he may have said after the briefing. I watched from i mean, look, i see whats happening here. I deal with people throughout the administration. From my perspective, hes in an incredibly frustrating place where, as i watch, ok, and i can watch very closely on many occasions, i mean, he ends up being being support knife way that i would hope the secretary of state would be supported. Thats just from my vantage point. But ive never, you know, i have no knowledge of the comments or anything else. I think hes in a very trying situation, trying to solve many of the worlds problems a lot of times without the kind of support and help that id like to see him have. Host the comments of senator corker, who was an ally and friend of secretary of state Rex Tillerson. This morning, front page of the Washington Post, this is feud dline, a new imperils of president agenda, it reads as follows h host thats this morning from the Washington Post. The column cyst joining us live on the phone. Thanks very much for being with us. Guest good morning. Host and i guess i just have to say, wow. Where do you begin with Something Like this . This is an early supporter of donald trump and a key ally on capitol hill that the president is going to need for the next year and a half. Guest thats right. Its a pretty extraordinary development. You know, it started with trump picking this fight with corker on twitter yesterday morning. And really attacking corker. And it just it unleashed a lot of comments that i suspect the senator had been holding on to for some time, waiting for the right moment to go public with. Noip case our audience missed what the president tweeted yesterday morning, let me share with all of you, and there are three of them from the president host phil rucker, your response. Guest yeah, you know, thats quite a charge from a president , and its worth noting that senator corkers chief of staff has gone on the record to state that the president was mischaracterizing those conversations, that actually the president had offered his support to senator corker should he run for reelection, that he wanted him to run for reelection, and that as recently as last monday of last week, the president called corker to ask him to reconsider his decision to retire and encouraged him to run for reelection and said he would have the president s support. Host and let me follow up on the comments by the New York Times in a story this morning indicating that with senator corker is what the New York Times is claiming many republicans have been saying privately for weeks or months. Guest thats right. And weve heard this, too. Theres been a lot of concern on capitol hill about the president s fitness for office and his Decision Making and what many of his allies even see as reckless behavior. But nobody has been willing to go on the record with those concerns. And to make them known publicly, and corker really becomes the first Senior Office holder to rebuke the president in such a fashion, i think it will be interesting to see whether any other republicans on capitol hill are going to join corker in his criticisms over the next few days, or if theyre all going to be, you know, remain timid and just keep those thoughts to themselves privately. Host the house is in. The senate is out for the columbus day break. And this is the response by senator bob corker in his tweet yesterday, which also was getting an awful lot of attention, its a shame the white house has become an Adult Daycare Center, someone obviously missed their shift this morning. Guest yeah. You know, that tweet was sort of went viral almost immediately online. It got many more retweets than any of the attacks that originated from President Trump. But it also fits this theme that corker has been pressing, including with his comments about tillerson, mattis, and kelly last week, where he said they protect the country from chaos. His point is that the president , when he makes decisions on his own, can be reckless and dangerous. And that its important that these figures are there to help protect from bad and reckless decisions. Host of course, phil rucker, this follows the News Conference late last week by the secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, basically denying that he called the president a moron, also saying that he serves at the pleasure of the president , and President Trump saying that he has a Good Relationship with his secretary of state, although he would prefer him to be a little bit tougher. So does that allow Rex Tillerson to bargain from a position of strength as the secretary of state when he meets with World Leaders . Guest not at all, in part because our reporting and the reporting of many other news organizations shows the opposite, that the relationship between trump and tillerson is incredibly strained right now, and, you know, irrepairable. I talked to a number of white house officials last week who said that these two men simply do not get along. Theres a breach of trust. They dont have personal chemistry. And that they do not expect tillerson will be around for very long. So when tillerson travels the world, hes something of a lame duck, and World Leaders are going to say why should i negotiate with you and take your word when the president may pop up on twitter in a few minutes here completely contradicting what youre saying . And thats the problem with this relationship. Its what we saw on north korea , the previous weekend, you know, eight or nine days ago, and its what i think were going to continue to see. Host so where does this put the president . Because clearly he has been trying to run against the establishment, and yet you have what many would call a very establishment republican, bob corker, going after him. Does this only energize his base . Guest you know, it could potential, but i think the problem is that corker is fairly respected around the world and in washington, and when he makes a comment like this, its not the same as any average senator speaking up. Its just the chairman of the Foreign Relations committee, somebody who is seen as a bipartisan straight shooter, and somebody whos known trump for some time and has a personal relationship with him. If hes offering this sort of assessment in public, i think the alarm bells go off. Host the president just a moment ago tweeting on north korea, let me just share it with you exactly what he said, along of lines of what hes been tweeting earlier, our country has been unsuccessfully dealing with north korea for 25 years, giving billions of dollars and getting nothing. Policy didnt work. By all accounts, including what he said late last week, its the calm before the storm, he is at least signaling the possibility of a military strike towards north korea. Is that a Fair Assessment . Guest i think this is a Fair Assessment, and this is something hes been signaling for some time, this point the feeling that the diplomatic policy has not been working with north korea for 25 years is a talking point that hes been hitting on repeatedly, including just on saturday. And so i think, you know, were going to continue to hear this drum beat from the president. The question i have is whether theres actual action, whether there are preparations underway behind all of the rhetoric for military action. We simply dont know. Theres no indication of that at this point other than, of course, the military being prepared and ready for something, you know, should the commander in chief choose. But i just dont know that theres anything more serious than that happening behind the scenes. Host let me also get your reaction from this headline from the Washington Post. The story points out the Trump Administration, one of the wealthiest in modern u. S. History, facing widening criticism over travel expenditures among some of the billionaires, budget hawks, and Business Executives who head federal agencies, and the reporting in the Washington Post that this could add up to millions of dollars in private charter air service for members of the cabinet just in the first eight, nine months of the Trump Administration. Guest yeah, its pretty extraordinary. The report actually found five separate inspectors general investigations underway into the travel practices of these cabinet members. You know, we sometimes think that tom price, the health secretary, was the only one abusing this system, and he was fired a week or two ago. But there are many other cabinet secretaries who have been flying around on private jets and taking these private flights when there are clearly affordable commercial options available to them. And i think its going to be very interesting to see where these investigations go and whether the president has tolerance for this, whether these other figures are going to get the boot the way price did. Host were talking with Philip Rucker from the Washington Post. His story is front page this morning, also Available Online at washingtonpost. Com. Let me bring it back to the story that many people will be talking about, your piece, and from the New York Times, senator corkers comments, and our colleague who manages our capitol hill coverage for cspan just a short while ago tweeting the following from 2016 to give you a sense of where the relationship once was between senator corker and President Trump, then candid trump, a great friend of mine, somebody respected by everybody, from raleigh, north carolina, in july 2016. So clearly, a relationship that was strong a year ago is now weakened. Guest thats right. And, you know, corker was one of the very first senator republican officials to actually embrace donald trump. He praised Foreign Policy speech that trump gave way back in april of 2016. This was in the heat of the primaries, when a lot of republican gray beard figures like corker were not willing to lend their gravitas to candidate trump, but corker was there. He praised him. He helped tutor trump. He helped kind of show trump about Foreign Affairs and help prepare him to be president and was considered a potential vicepresident ial running mate and also a potential secretary of state. So this is a real rupture in one of the few personal relationship that trump has had in washington, and it could be damaging for his legislative agenda, you know, corker sits as chairman of the Foreign Relations committee. So, you know, should the president punt this iran decision up to congress, which is what we expect to happen this week, its going to be corker helping oversee that process. Another key point, you know, should trump get rid of Rex Tillerson and have a new secretary of state, those confirmation hearings are going to occur in corkers committee, with corker presiding. So this is a very influential senator whos going to have a lot to determine the future of this administration. Host as always, Philip Rucker, we appreciate your insight. Your piece this morning is front page of the newspaper. Thank you very much for being with us. Guest thank you, steve. Host it was 20 years ago this morning that cspan radio first went on the air. We purchased a Radio Station from the university of district of columbia, which was at that point an alljazz format, and now Public Affairs 24 7. Cspan purchased it for 13 million, thanks to our board of directors and the cable industry. Were heard in the washington, d. C. , area, and the surrounding area, about 100 miles away, including as far south as richmond and north up to baltimore. Cspan radio is completely advertising free, funded entirely by the cable and satellite industry. Be sure to check out our free cspan radio app. Well be down in the radio studio for the second half of the program. Right now, we want to get your reaction to this now very public feud between the president and the chair of the Senate Foreign relations committee, republican senator bob corker. Phone lines are open. Well begin with emma, joining us from stockton, california, on our line for democrats. Good morning. Caller good morning. Congratulations on your 20th year. Host thank you. Caller i agree with senator corker, because i thought host its senator corker, just so were clear at the outset, senator bob corker. Caller right, i apologize for that. I wouldnt try to say his name again. But i thought everybody up there had surrendered their moral integrity, just letting this man get away the president get away with too much. And you feel helpless, because you know right from wrong, and everybody is experiencing this, and he keeps messing with north korea when he should be worried about russia building up their military presence up there by alaska. And i think were going to have some issues about some new oil or whatever they find up there. But the point is, its like hes in a pilot in the airplane and were all on the plane, and he doesnt know how to fly the plane. And whatever he says, he doesnt understand what hes saying, because what he says has consequences. And i just dont want to be, you know, ive been struggling hard to live, and this man wants to commit suicide by being arrogant and he has no character and no honor, and i really hope that they impeach him. Thats all i have to say. Host emma from stockton, california. Phone lines are open at 2027488001 for republicans. 2027488000 for desms also getting your tweets, here are a couple, including this one who says trump seems to be the only one who can be politically incorrect. When corker is, trump calls for his head on a plate. What a moron. And theres this from richard rogers, secretary tillerson says President Donald Trump is a moron, senator corker says the white house is a daycare without an adult, thats g. O. P. Talking . Jeez. On the republican line from maine, leslie, youre next, good morning. Caller yes, i believe trump knows exactly what hes doing. These people are dysfunctional. Trump knows exactly what he has to do. Chamberlain didnt take care of hitler, and now were dealing with north korea. North korea has got a mad man in charge of everything, and sooner or later were going to have to deal with it. We cant just sit and wait for north korea to nail us first. Host leslie, thanks for the call. Ben from new york, republican line. Good morning. Caller yes, well, im ashamed of you, because you let this fellow from the Washington Post come on there and go on and on and on. And hes representing a fake news newspaper. Host why do you say that . Caller excuse me . Host why do you say its fake news . Caller well, you know, he just said about 25 or 30 things during your interview. You never challenged him on anything. Host so what should i have challenged him on . Caller well, the fact that corker is part of the swamp to begin with. This guy corker, what way is this for a senator to start making remarks about the president behind his back . Come on. Host well, i mean, he did not make it behind his back. He told it to the New York Times, the front page story this morning. Caller yeah, but the times and the post both have agendas. You know that. Host keep in mind, he was one of the earliest supporters of donald trump back in the spring of last year. Caller well, you know, youre making these short he was he is trying to survive this guy, corker. What do you know about him . Do you know anything about him . Host i do, in fact, we did a profile interview. Its available on our website at cspan span. Org. Hes been in the senate, now in his second term. He announced hes not going to seek a third term. Hes the chair of the Senate Foreign relations committee. He was an early trump supporter. Dont you think his comments merit again, were just asking your reaction and youre providing that reaction, so we appreciate that. Caller well, i have providing it, and i think that you have taken and you h