March 18, 2018

Congressional Republicans Didn’t Like These Tweets From the President

Trump’s attacks on Special Counsel Mueller drew a few warnings on Sunday morning.

SMG via ZUMA Wire

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

President Donald Trump kicked off Sunday morning with a series of tweets accusing former FBI director James Comey of lying under oath, criticizing special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into potential collusion with Russia, and doubling down on his administration’s firing of Comey’s second-in-command Andrew McCabe.

Meanwhile, Republican lawmakers took to the airwaves to take issue with the president’s moves, with one warning that if Trump took action against Mueller, his stint in office would be at risk. 

On NBC’s Meet the Press Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said he would have handled the McCabe situation differently, arguing that McCabe “should’ve been allowed to finish through the weekend.” Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired McCabe two days before he was set to retire after 21 years at the FBI. “I don’t like the way it happened,” Rubio said. 

On CNN’s State of the Union, Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) said Trump’s firing of McCabe was “a horrible day for democracy,” drawing a contrast with to the president’s Tweet applauding his removal as a “great day for democracy.”

“To have firings like this happening at the top, from the president and the attorney general, does not speak well for what’s going on,” Flake, who has been more willing to criticize Trump than the vast majority of his GOP colleagues, said. If the president’s escalating attacks on the Russia probe were to culminate in Mueller’s firing, “We in Congress can’t accept that,” Flake warned, adding that he hoped his Republican colleagues would warn the president about the consequences of firing Mueller in the coming days.

When asked how Republicans in Congress would respond if Trump’s tried to shut down the Russia investigation, Rep. Trey Gowdy, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, told Fox News Sunday he hoped the president would let Mueller continue with the probe. “If the allegation is collusion with the Russians and there is no evidence of that, and you are innocent of that, act like it,” Gowdy said. 

In a separate interview on CNN’s State of the Union, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) was asked whether the president’s attacks on the Russia investigation suggested the president would go after Mueller. In response, Graham warned that “if he tried to do that, that would be the beginning of the end of his presidency, because we are a rule of law nation.” 

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate