They used to be brothers in arms. Now one is being driven off the battlefield, and the other is the president’s right-hand man. How one relationship explains the fractured GOP.
By Tim Albert | POLITICO
hey had been tight for two decades: Both ran conservative think tanks in their states in the 1990s; both were elected to the U.S. Congress in 2000, at one point occupying neighboring offices; both were lonely leaders of intraparty rebellions during the big-spending tenure of President George W. Bush; both left the House of Representatives in 2012 to run successfully for statewide office; above all, both strove to be regarded as gentleman conservatives, known for a personal decency that infused their relationships and reputations in the nation’s capital.
And yet both men knew, after one fateful week in July 2016, that their friendship would never be the same. The reason: Donald Trump.
On a Thursday afternoon, one of these men, a junior senator from a Western state, found himself locked in a tense verbal confrontation with Trump. The presumptive GOP nominee was visiting Washington, D.C., to meet with Senate Republicans, and the niceties came to a sudden halt when Trump singled out one of them—Jeff Flake—for having criticized his candidacy. “Yes, I’m the other senator from Arizona, the one that wasn’t captured,” Flake responded, referring to Trump’s infamous assessment that John McCain was “not a war hero” and that he preferred “people who weren’t captured.” Flake, who was meeting Trump face to face for the first time that day, told the soon-to-be-nominee: “I want to talk to you about statements like that.”
