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Corker on media: 'I had a newfound empathy' for Trump

By LOUIS NELSON

Sen. Bob Corker, among President Donald Trump’s most frequent Republican critics, said Thursday that he has developed a new empathy for the president’s “fake news” crusade against the media after reports swirled about a “Corker kickback” that some allege prompted the senator to change his vote on the White House-backed tax reform bill.

“I told him that I’d had a healthy respect for the media. I deal with them all the time and, you know, to attack the media has not been something I've done. But I had a newfound empathy for him in watching how a totally debunked story” spread across the political media, Corker (R-Tenn.) told Fox News’s “Fox & Friends” as he recalled a recent conversation with the president.

“The guys that actually wrote this bill knew I had nothing whatsoever to do with it. But then you have this reporter who says this. All of a sudden people that I respect in the news media, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, people start printing this as if it's true,” Corker continued. “A social media phenomenon generates from this and I've never ever used in my life the word ‘fake news’ until today. I actually understand what it is the president has been dealing with.”

Despite the “Corker kickback” label that has been pinned to it, the Tennessee Republican has strenuously insisted that he had nothing to do with the provision in question, which allows people with real estate holdings through a limited liability company to take advantage of a tax deduction for pass-through businesses, which pay taxes as individuals, not as corporations.

Corker, who has significant real estate investments and would stand to benefit significantly from the new provision, was initially a “no” vote on the GOP tax bill because of its potential to balloon the federal deficit. But Corker voted “yes” Wednesday on the final version of the bill, a change that he has denied had anything to do with the provision.

Further, Corker said Thursday that he had had nothing to do with the specific provision’s inclusion, a point that Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas) and Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), the respective chairmen of the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee, have also made in Corker’s defense.

“Look, this is a travesty that something like this will be put forth. Look, the fact is this was a provision that came from the House of Representatives,” Corker said. “I've had zero impact on a word of the tax policy. I focused on deficits. The reporter that wrote about this knew I was unaware of the provision.”