Senators rally behind Trump and his agenda

WASHINGTON (AP) — There was no dam break of Republican rancor against Donald Trump on today, a day after a pair of the party's prominent senators denounced the president and invited colleagues to join them.

Instead, most GOP lawmakers rallied around Trump and his agenda, with one all but saying "good riddance" to Jeff Flake of Arizona and Bob Corker of Tennessee.

"Maybe we do better by having some of the people who just don't like him leave, and replace them with somebody else," Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma told The Associated Press. "And I think that's what's happening."

Trump heartily agreed, declaring that both men were retiring because they couldn't win re-election, and "I think I'm probably helped greatly in Arizona by what happened with Sen. Flake."

Inhofe went further than most GOP lawmakers, but he had plenty of company in his refusal to echo the criticisms of Flake and Corker. Trump himself proclaimed he was leading a party unified in its pursuit of tax-cut legislation.

"There is great unity in the Republican Party," he contended as he left the White House for a hurricane briefing and other events in Texas. Claiming a show of affection at his appearance at a Senate GOP lunch a day earlier, Trump said: "I called it a lovefest. It was almost a lovefest. Maybe it was a lovefest." He's said repeatedly that he got multiple standing ovations.

But if the lunch – no outsiders allowed – displayed unity of sorts, the events that preceded and followed it did the opposite. First Corker and then Flake blistered Trump with criticism, accusing him of leading the nation into a moral black hole.

Both lawmakers do plan to retire at the end of next year, a semi-bombshell Flake dropped Tuesday, freeing them to speak without fear.

Flake kept it up today with an opinion piece in The Washington Post. He likened the current moment to the red scare era of the early 1950s when Sen. Joseph McCarthy threw accusations of communism at a wide range of people. McCarthy's career ended in disgrace, his downfall hastened when an Army lawyer, Joseph Welch, confronted him at a hearing with the question: "Have you no sense of decency, Sir, at long last?"