North by Northwestern

There’s no place like home. But what if that home is the White House, and those who live in it hate you? Let’s ask the President. In recent months, several GOP members expressed opposition to their own party leader, President Donald Trump.

This line of insubordination began on Oct. 4 when Secretary of State and former head of ExxonMobil Rex Tillerson allegedly called the President a “moron.” Though Tillerson did not explicitly confirm the word, he did not deny it, instead following up by saying, “I’m not going to deal with stuff like that.”

On Tuesday, Oct. 24, the saga continued with the President engaged in a public feud with Sen. Bob Corker, a Tennessee Republican. Sen. Corker refused to support the new tax bill, which barred financial firms from contracts that rule out lawsuits related to their products. The President blames the Senator for attempting to work against the party for these tax cuts. Corker also said he would not back Trump in a campaign again.

“I think the things that are happening right now that are harmful to our nation," Corker told CNN. "I think at the end of the day, when his term is over, I think the debasing of our nation, the constant non-truth telling, just the name-calling ... I think the debasement of our nation will be what he'll be remembered most for, and that's regretful."

The President took to Twitter (surprise!) in response. Trump wrote salacious things about Corker’s views and his previous campaign.

The crux of this quarrel, however, is that Sen. Corker’s support for the tax cuts was not even essential in getting the bill to pass. The party needed only 50 votes, which it did without the support of Corker – Vice President Mike Pence cast the 51st and deciding vote late Tuesday night, canceling the Obama-era rule that favored class-action suits against banks in attempt to protect customers. In situations like the Wells Fargo fake account scandal, customers will now have fewer rights to protect their purchases.

But the hate goes beyond the tax cuts – Sen. Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican, said in a speech on the Senate floor Tuesday, Oct. 24, that Trump is “dangerous to our democracy.”

“It is time for our complicity and our accommodation of the unacceptable to end,” Flake told the Washington Post. “Politics can make us silent when we should speak, and silence can equal complicity.” He went on to ask other Republicans to join him in acknowledging the irrationality of the President.

For months, the White House has been in a flurry, firing and replacing and firing again, position after position. These claims of action against the President are nothing new, as former presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama both decried the President’s many of the President’s unfair policies and acknowledged the strife of the nation. Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican, has referred to Trump’s tactics as “half-baked, spurious nationalism.”

Neither Sen. Corker nor Sen. Flake plan to run for re-election. Both find fault with the current state of the presidency. As Flake said in his Tuesday Senate address, "If I have been critical, it's not because I relish criticizing the behavior of the President of the United States," Flake said. "If I have been critical, it is because I believe that it is my obligation to do so, as a matter of duty and conscience."

On the other hand, though, former White House Chief Strategist Stephen Bannon is apparently building up a group of insurgent candidates to rebel against the established Republican party, with plans to “disrupt the 2018 midterm elections,” according to the Washington Post.

“We must stop pretending that the degradation of our politics and the conduct of some in our executive branch are normal,” Sen. Flake said. “They are not normal. Reckless, outrageous and undignified behavior has become excused and countenanced as ‘telling it like it is’ when it is actually just reckless, outrageous and undignified.”

They say a house divided cannot stand. But President Trump is working in a mutinous house. With staunch Republican party members denouncing the President, the public will see whether the house on the Hill will stand or fall (or perhaps just send out some more nasty tweets to deal with it all).

Click here to learn more about lesser known problems within the administration.