{"id":797717,"date":"2019-07-17T09:36:31","date_gmt":"2019-07-17T15:36:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.summitdaily.com\/?p=368871"},"modified":"2019-07-17T09:36:31","modified_gmt":"2019-07-17T15:36:31","slug":"gardner-had-good-news-for-colorado-but-trump-had-tweets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/local-news\/gardner-had-good-news-for-colorado-but-trump-had-tweets\/","title":{"rendered":"Gardner had good news for Colorado. But Trump had tweets."},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
In this Wednesday, April 10 photo, Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., listens to testimony during a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington. Gardner had good news for Colorado voters and a planned rollout. But Trump\u2019s tweets about four Democratic women of color overshadowed his success.<\/strong>
AP Photo \/ Susan Walsh, File<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

WASHINGTON \u2014 Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner had reeled in a big political fish.<\/p>\n

A major government agency, the Bureau of Land Management, was moving to his state and marking a victory years in the making for one of the Senate\u2019s most vulnerable Republicans. But Gardner\u2019s moment of triumph rolled out Monday in the shadow of President Donald Trump\u2019s racist tweets calling for four congresswomen of color to \u201cgo back\u201d to where they came from. Republicans, perhaps Gardner most of all, struggled to respond.<\/p>\n

A conservative radio show host wanted to know: Had Gardner heard about Trump\u2019s tweets?<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have been working on the BLM move, and that\u2019s basically everything we\u2019ve been trying to get done,\u201d Gardner replied.<\/p>\n

\u201cI translate that as \u2018I don\u2019t want to talk about it,’\u201d chortled Denver host Steffan Tubbs.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a feeling widely shared among Republicans in Congress weary of answering for Trump\u2019s assorted provocations about Mexicans, Muslims, immigrants, people of color, women and more.<\/p>\n

But as Gardner\u2019s response showed, Trump\u2019s pass-or-fail loyalty tests don\u2019t leave \u201cno comment\u201d as much of an option for the Republican senators running for reelection in 2020. The president has a record of helping unseat \u201cdisloyal\u201d members of the GOP in the House and the Senate. Love, hate or tolerate Trump, Gardner and other endangered Republicans will need his support as the president amps up his own bid for reelection.<\/p>\n

There was a sense this week that Trump\u2019s \u201cgo home\u201d controversy marked an intensifying phase in the president\u2019s approach and that Gardner may have offered an early clue for 2020 campaigns on how to respond when the president steps on an accomplishment. The answer: blandly and minimally, with relentless pivots back to issues.<\/p>\n

On Sunday, Trump launched an unapologetic stream of tweets suggesting that the four women leave the United States and casting them as haters of America, Jews and Israel. He didn\u2019t name the members of the self-styled \u201csquad,\u201d but his remarks were in clear reference to liberal freshmen Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan. Condemnation rolled in from Democrats and a few Republicans, and Trump offered no apologies.<\/p>\n

Then came what was supposed to be Gardner\u2019s rollout Monday, when he tweeted midafternoon that he was \u201cthrilled\u201d to announce that the administration was moving the agency from Washington to Grand Junction, Colorado. The Interior Department, which oversees the bureau, said about 300 jobs would move to Western states, with about 85 jobs for Colorado.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a victory for local communities, advocates for public lands and proponents for a more responsible and accountable federal government,\u201d Gardner said in a statement.<\/p>\n

By Tuesday, Gardner offered up a more on-point answer to the question of whether and how much he supports Trump\u2019s racist tweets.<\/p>\n

\u201cI disagree with the president,\u201d Gardner told Denver-area KOA NewsRadio. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t have sent these tweets.\u201d<\/p>\n

But asked by CNN later at the Capitol, he would not say whether he thought Trump\u2019s tweets were racist.<\/p>\n

His caution may have been informed by the election math. Gardner was elected to the Senate by a little under 2 percentage points in the Republican wave year of 2014, while Democrats swept statewide offices in Colorado last year, winning the governorship by 11 percentage points. Democrat Hillary Clinton defeated Trump in Colorado by 5 percentage points in 2016. Voter registration in the state is divided more or less evenly three ways, among Republicans, Democrats and independents.<\/p>\n

That makes Gardner perhaps the most vulnerable GOP senator in the country as Republicans defend 22 seats and their Senate majority.<\/p>\n

Like many in his party, Gardner has a complicated history with Trump. Gardner briefly endorsed the reality television star-turned-presidential candidate in 2016 but rescinded that backing after the \u201cAccess Hollywood\u201d tape in which Trump boasted of groping women.<\/p>\n

This time, Gardner has already endorsed Trump\u2019s reelection campaign.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s had to walk a political tightrope. To win another term, Gardner will need to hold the votes of Colorado\u2019s Trump-allied Republicans who remain suspicious of the senator\u2019s rescinded endorsement in 2016, while winning over independents who reject the president but are wary of the Democrats\u2019 agenda.<\/p>\n

Gardner has occasionally chastised the president after controversial moments \u2013 notably after Trump praised \u201cboth sides\u201d following a confrontation between neo-Nazis and activists in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 that left a counterprotester dead \u2013 and he\u2019s carved out a distinct path on immigration. But Gardner has also voted for most of Trump\u2019s priorities. He\u2019s supported the president\u2019s effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act, his tax cut, both his Supreme Court justices and several other federal judges, along with most of his Cabinet.<\/p>\n

Gardner, who has a sunny disposition, has also embraced elements of Trump\u2019s incendiary remarks. In a speech at a conservative gathering in Denver on Friday, Gardner, who has bemoaned Democrats\u2019 embrace of \u201csocialism,\u201d slammed what Republicans describe as the leftward drift of Democrats.<\/p>\n

\u201cSince when did wearing the Betsy Ross flag become akin to wearing a swastika?\u201d Gardner asked. \u201cSince when did men and women trying to protect our borders and keep our country safe become Nazis running concentration camps?<\/p>\n

Gardner\u2019s approach apparently passed Trump\u2019s loyalty test and by late Tuesday was being cited as an example for others in the party.<\/p>\n

\u201cSen. Gardner is rightly focused on policies, not personalities,\u201d said Sen. Todd Young of Indiana, chairman of the Senate\u2019s Republican campaign arm. \u201cIf we do that, we win.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Trump\u2019s efforts to rally his base of supporters can flip well-laid plans, said one pollster.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s difficult to have that be an effective strategy when the president decides to blast away at four women of color,\u201d GOP pollster David Flaherty said of Gardner\u2019s efforts to focus on a pro-Colorado agenda.<\/p>\n

via:: Summit Daily<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this Wednesday, April 10 photo, Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., listens to testimony during a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington. Gardner had good news for Colorado voters and a planned rollout. But Trump\u2019s tweets about four Democratic women of color overshadowed his success.AP Photo \/ Susan Walsh, File WASHINGTON \u2014 Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[99],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-797717","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-18 01:54:10","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSMT The Mountain","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=797717"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797717\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=797717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=797717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=797717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}