Top McCain Aide: Congressional Republicans are "cowards" for not standing up to Trump

Mark Salter, Senator John McCain's long-time advisor, says GOP members in the House and Senate are too terrified of Trump to defy him & America will pay a price for their timidity.

For over two decades, Mark Salter worked for Sen. John McCain. He was one of his closest advisors. He played a key role in McCain’s two presidential runs, in 2000 and 2008 when McCain won the Republican presidential nomination. He wrote his speeches and co-authored seven books with the late Arizona senator. He was his friend and confidante. Salter knows the U.S. Senate, how it works and doesn’t work. He knows many of the current Republican and Democratic senators. I spoke with him recently about the month-old Trump Administration, why there has been no Republicans resistance to President Trump in Congress and if he thinks there ever will be.

Mark Salter. Photo credit: McCain Institute

RC: Just looking at what the Trump administration has done lately. We got tariffs placed on foreign steel and aluminum, the USAID shutdown, RFK, Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard headed for confirmation, the president threatening to shut off aid to Jordan and Egypt if they don’t take Palestinians from Gaza so it can be developed as a resort, the impoundment of appropriations by Congress, New York City’s mayor’s corruption charges dropped by federal prosecutors. Remember the old zombie movie, The Night of the Living Dead? There is a scene early on when the local sheriff says, “It’s like an epidemic of insanity.”

MS: He’s been a busy boy.

RC: What do you make of this? Is there method to the madness? The alleged madness, I guess I should say.

MS: He couldn’t be doing this without the collapse of independence on the part of Republican members of Congress. There is none. The whole lot of them, including the moderate ones, Susan Collins (R-Maine), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), Todd Young (R-Indiana). I doubt there are five Republican senators who think that (Health and Human Services director) RFK, Jr., or (director of National Intelligence) Tulsi Gabbard, or (Defense Secretary) Pete Hegseth, or Kash Patel (still unconfirmed as FBI director) are fit for the offices they hold. They know they’re unfit. They’re going along with it. Trump’s got them scared, so they’re getting away with this stuff. But he’s going to own those agencies that they run and they’re going to do some deeply weird shit.

Clockwise from upper left: Robert Kennedy, Jr. Photo credit: sweejak. Tulsi Gabbard. Photo credit: Gage Skidmore

Kash Patel. Photo credit: Gage Skidmore. Pete Hegseth. Photo credit: U.S. Dept. of Defense

RC: And the people in Congress who accommodated this, they’re willing to pay that price?

MS: They think it won’t be their price, but it will be. You hear them all defending the threats against the judiciary, the veiled threats that J.D. Vance and Elon Musk are busy issuing. I don’t see much evidence that they’re going to ignore the court's rulings, but maybe they are. Maybe they’ll go to the Supreme Court and just say, “Well, fine. We don’t care [what you rule].” Then we really do have a major problem and you’d think somebody would speak up about it.

Democrats, not surprisingly, are at a loss about how to proceed here. They’re getting swamped by a firehouse of lies. They’re deeply unsure of themselves after the election and not putting up much of a fight as far as I can tell. I think it will come and I think it will come sooner rather than later.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (left). Photo credit: NATO Training Mission - Afghanistan. Sen. Susan Collins (right). Photo credit: Talk Media News Archival Gallery

Sen. Thomas Tillis (left). Photo credit: United States Senate. Sen. Todd Young (right). Photo credit: Library of Congress

RC: What will come? The fight? The pushback?

MS: I think it’ll be the public. Bad stuff is going to happen. He’s doing a lot of things that are going to cause bad stuff. If Trump is left to run amuck, he’s going to do things like try to own the real estate development of Gaza. He’s going to do strange, crazy shit. He’s going to get Americans killed. He’s going to do stuff and it’s going to come back to haunt him. Tariffs are going to raise the cost of goods and services in this country. That’s what tariffs do.

There is something wrong with Trump, obviously. He’s a narcissistic psychopath. But there’s something a bit more deranged about Elon Musk. I wouldn’t say Trump is popular right now. He’s about even approval, disapproval. But Musk is decidedly unpopular and he’s acting like a really weird guy and he’s hurting people. You’re going to hear stories about farmers going out of business and this and that, and eventually it’s going to pile up.

RC: So when people feel the effects of his policies and his executive orders, you think they’ll make the connection that Trump did this and it’s hurting me?


MS: They have a shortage of air traffic controllers. He’s trying to get the ones we’ve got to quit because they’re female or African-American or gay or whatever. The next time there’s a big crash, it will be on his watch. Deservedly so, people will blame him for it. When you hear stories about kids dying who were in medical trials because the funding spigot was turned off by Donald Trump, that’s going to come back and it’s going to hurt (him). The press has got to be attuned to those things and go after him and hold him accountable. I know they’re worried but they have to boldly go where no one else wants to go.

RC: When it comes to Republicans in the Senate, some of whom you know, do you think — at least for those who aren’t true believers like Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) or Tommy Tuberville (R-Alabama) — just that they’re afraid of what Trump can do to them politically so they’ll go along with him?

MS: Two things. They’re cowards. And they’re totally selfish. Their primary interest is their preservation and power, that they keep their offices. I don’t know how you get to your late 60s or 70s and lose all self-respect and think it’s worth it. You don’t have much time left. Everybody that leaves Congress, 99.999 percent of members of Congress are forgotten two weeks after they leave the place. You rarely see a McCain or somebody like that who’s remembered long after he dies. Very few of them will be. All they’ve got left is their own self-respect, their own sense that they did something that benefited others, that they served their country well. To hang onto your seat for a fourth or fifth term, you’re willing to prostitute yourself so Donald Trump doesn’t get upset with you, the volatile baby that was elected president? They’ll be ashamed of themselves and that’s what they’ll feel at the end. I’m getting a little long in the tooth too and the things I did wrong, not just mistakes, they stay with you. If you’ve got any kind of conscience at all they stay with you.

RC: If that is the calculation, and it sure looks like it, do you think there’s some line they draw, some behavior, some policy where even those who have been craven and complicit say, “I won’t accept this”?

MS: Say birthright citizenship gets to the Supreme Court and they rule, “No, Donald Trump, you’ve misinterpreted the 14th Amendment to the Constitution,” and Trump says, “Fuck you. I’m not going to heed that, I’m going to throw these people out of the country anyway.” I don’t think that’ll happen. That’s too big of a challenge. They’ll try something smaller. But if they were to do something like that, I would like to think that one or two Republicans would pipe up. But, again, the idea that Tulsi Gabbard, who is pro-Putin, pro-Assad, anti-small “d” democrats fighting oppressive governments or invading forces, a person who cannot say Edward Snowden is guilty of treason, refused to say it, (was confirmed as director of national intelligence) is something I didn’t think I’d see from national security hawks in the Republican Caucus to a person. They just disgraced themselves. So, no, I don’t think there’s any limit on how much they’ll disgrace themselves. They’re all a bunch of cowards.

RC: You were around the Senate for a long time. Does this surprise you?

MS: The extent of cowardice, yes. It surprises me. I know they know, I know they feel what they’re doing is wrong and deep down they know what they’ve done is wrong and hurts the country. I thought that would’ve been too much for some of them, but apparently not.

Senator McCain and Mark Salter at book signing. Photo credit: ursusdave

RC: If Senator McCain were alive, where would he fit in in this Senate?

MS: I think he would have led the fight against Tulsi Gabbard. I think he would have been in the forefront of critics of Bobby Kennedy, Jr.. I think he would’ve been screaming bloody murder about birthright citizenship being ignored or interpreted the opposite of what it does mean.

Trump wasn’t this bad eight years ago. He was bad. Incompetent. Ignorant. Selfish. Self-obsessed. Vain. But he wasn’t doing this much bad stuff at the start and John was pretty vocal in his criticism of him.

RC: Your senator, Angus King, Independent who caucuses with the Democrats, said the Constitution is “under the most direct and consequential assault in our nation’s history, an assault not on a particular provision but on the essential structure of the Constitution itself.” Do you agree?

MS: Well, Marbury vs Madison (the 1803 Supreme Court decision that established the authority of the court to invalidate unconstitutional laws). I think the Constitution was under much more direct and physical threat at the time during the Civil War. But that’s a quibble. In the modern era, absolutely.