Trump has 2-3 weeks to fix campaign: GOP Sen. Corker

Corker, whose name has been floated as a potential Trump vice presidential pick or nominee for secretary of state, also tried to tamp down speculation that he’s angling for a top Trump administration job. The rumors escalated after he praised Trump’s late-April foreign policy speech. Some people who know Corker well say it’s not in his blood to be someone else’s surrogate and that he would chafe at the limitations of a traditional vice presidency. They acknowledge, however, that he could be tempted to try his hand at being the nation’s top diplomat.

But Corker scoffed at the notion that was he in “any kind of job-application mode.” He insisted that his meeting with the candidate in late May was just a get-acquainted chat between “two people who did not know each other.” As for a possible role in a Trump administration, “we haven’t had any of those kinds of discussions,” Corker said.

He compared his praise for Trump’s foreign policy address to “trying to lay a bread trail towards a better place” for the Trump campaign and encourage fellow Republicans to engage their presumptive nominee rather than going “the total dis route.”

“It wasn’t, like, the best speech I ever heard on foreign policy, but it was at a critical time whe-re he was moving away it appeared f-rom the daily personality campaign to one whe-re he tried to give a substantive speech,” Corker said.

Corker also said he has spoken with former Secretary of State James Baker before and after Baker’s own meetings with Trump.

“He’s got a period of time here that is incredibly important to his campaign to demonstrate that he has the ability to become a general election candidate, to move away f-rom personality issues and move more towards substantive policy issues,” Corker said. “If he keeps moving towards the convention with similar types of weeks like the last one, I just fear that he’s going to be in a position that doesn’t really allow him to fully take advantage of this incredible opportunity.”