reporter: not from president trump, craig. i think he s made that clear by what he s talking about online, on twitter. a real reversal from the president s prior attitude back in 2016 and even earlier this year towards senator corker. burning bridges, that is nothing president trump has ever been afraid of. setting aside whether that s legislatively smart for him to do. whether from a strategy perspective that s something he would want to be doing. i will tell you that privately, there s not a lot of push back when you talk to white house officials acknowledging it s not great for tax reform. but the strategy so far has been, turn the fire on corker, instead. point to, for example, what he did on the iran deal when that was happening under president obama. tried to drive a wedge between the base, donald trump s base and senator corker and make this a political issue, essentially. the white house, according to public statements that top
liberated. as a political strategy, it s hard to see what the possible end game could be for president trump to alienate him. corker is one of the most important members of congress for the agenda. chairman of the foreign relations committee. he holds the key to things like the iran deal and changes the president wants to make. securing confirmation to nominees for high-level posts such as the state department, potentially rex tillerson will be replaced, corker will have a say in that. he s also a crucial vote on tax reform. he s laying down some stiff red lines on things like it cannot add to the deficit. without corker s vote, it s hard to see how the president gets this through. he s been tweeting about how he s not happy with corker on health care, taxes, the iran deal. he ll be senator for the next 15 months. if the. the wants to get an aden again da through, he ll probably need senator corker. i want to read another snippet from the interview with the times. he concerns me, t