Republicans don't want to talk about Trump's "nuclear button" tweet

President Trump’s nuclear button-measuring contest with the leader of North Korea Tuesday night, when he tweeted “I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!”, sparked a swift public outcry.

But for Republicans in Congress, it was apparently just another day and another tweet to ride out.

Contacted by VICE News about the president seemingly playing nuclear chicken with Kim Jong Un, all 11 Republicans on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee did not respond for comment. Neither did the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee or the chairman of the House Asia and the Pacific subcommittee.

It’s become a familiar routine for congressional Republicans: Trump tweets something they privately don’t agree with or find embarrassing, but they shy away from publicly criticizing a president of their own party or antagonizing the Republican voters who support the president (and who they need themselves). Democrats also have a routine, of snarking at the president on Twitter.

The Trump administration has become increasingly confrontational with the North Korean regime over its first year in power. Beyond the president’s tweets and taunts of Kim as “Little Rocket Man,” National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster told Fox News in October that Trump is “willing to do anything necessary” to prevent Kim from threatening the U.S. with a nuclear weapon. White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders explained Wednesday afternoon that Trump was pivoting on North Korea from what she called the “silence and complacency” of the Obama administration.

Even when the topic is nuclear war, Republicans batten down the hatches and try to ride it out. That includes Republicans who have occasionally been willing to publicly criticize the president, such as Sens. Bob Corker of Tennessee and Jeff Flake of Arizona, both of whom serve on the Foreign Relations committee.

Both senators declined to speak to VICE News or offer a statement regarding Trump’s latest comments on North Korea.

Corker, who chairs the Foreign Relations Committee, said in October that Trump was treating the presidency like a “reality show” and could put the country “on the path to World War III.” Corker then held a hearing in November on the “Authority to Order the Use of Nuclear Weapons” with Trump’s access to the nuclear codes being the implicit topic.

“The statements the president makes through his Twitter account no doubt cause concern and confusion on the other side of the Pacific,” Brian McKeon, one of the three experts at the hearing and the former acting undersecretary for policy at the Department of Defense, said at the time. “I would be very worried about a miscalculation based on continuing use of his Twitter account with regard to North Korea.”

Read : Kim Jong Un kicked of 2018 by pressing Trump's buttons

Asked for his reaction to Trump’s tweet, McKeon suggested that both leaders were being paper tigers. “It’s typical Trump — an over-the-top reaction to what the North Korean leader said,” he told VICE News. “There is no ‘nuclear button’ on the president’s desk; I doubt there is one in Pyongyang, either. Both leaders are, in part, playing to internal audiences.”

One of the other experts at Corker’s hearing, Duke political science professor Peter Feaver, told VICE News he believed Trump was “speaking metaphorically and we should hope that the North Korean leader was as well.”

But McKeon also voiced a word of warning about how the tweets can make a tenuous situation spiral out of control. “They could, one day, lead to a miscalculation that results in a war,” he said in an email. “Since nobody working for the President seems to be capable of imposing discipline on his Twitter rants, perhaps Congressional Republicans can persuade him to exercise some forbearance.”

There is a bill in Congress right now that would require congressional approval before any pre-emptive nuclear strike.

Currently, there is one Republican co-sponsor in the House and zero in the Senate.