Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) has accused establishment Republicans and their congressional staff of deliberately undermining President Donald Trump’s agenda from within, saying the biggest threat to the president’s reelection and legislative goals isn’t Democrats—it’s the “crooked” elements inside his own party.
In a blistering interview with commentator Benny Johnson, Burchett alleged that entrenched bureaucrats, lobbyist influence, and self-serving leadership ambitions have paralyzed the GOP’s ability to deliver for Trump and the American people.
“It’s a structural problem, Benny,” Burchett said. “I think you’ve got staffers in key spots that are crooked. I think they’re in bed, literally or figuratively, with lobbyists, and they kill very good pieces of legislation.”
According to Burchett, these unelected insiders intentionally stall or bury bills that advance Trump’s populist policies.
“That’s why you see study committees say they’re going to study this bill for a year, and then it magically goes away,” he continued. “I think that’s part of the design because they want to undermine Trump. Ultimately, they hate him because he is cutting off their money.”
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Burchett described a culture of corruption where lobbyists, congressional aides, and power-hungry lawmakers form an unholy alliance to protect their own financial and political interests. “You’ve got a great piece of legislation. It’s not going anywhere. You go to the committee and say, ‘What’s going on?’ The chairman says, ‘Well, talk to this staffer, it’s under their purview,’” he said. “You go in this office, and generally some of them are pretty arrogant. It’s kind of scary—an unelected bureaucrat sitting back there, no name, no face, nobody knows who they are except in this little world we live in.”
The Tennessee Republican added that many staffers have been compromised by Washington’s lobbying culture. “They’ve got the ear of a lobbyist, a paid lobbyist who’s probably taken them out for drinks, steak dinner, maybe they went on a CODEL, you know, to some fancy place—Qatar, or ‘Cutter,’ or maybe Myrtle Beach,” Burchett said. “So the lobbyist has got their ear. Something shady’s going on there.”
He accused these operatives of working to quietly tank Trump-aligned initiatives by delaying them under the guise of “study” or “review.” “They come to them and say, ‘Hey, man, we can’t have this bill—it’s going to kill us.’ So what do they do? The staff says, ‘Well, let’s study this bill for a year, and then come back with a report,’” Burchett said. “And you know as good as I do, Congress—our attention span is 30 minutes or less. We’ve moved on to another bright shiny object, some other calamity in the press, passing legislation that will absolutely do nothing for us.”
Burchett also took aim at Republican leadership, suggesting that personal ambition is driving dysfunction. “You’ve got speakers and people in leadership, and people are undermining them,” he said. “Most members of Congress think they’re going to be the next speaker or want to be the next speaker. So, in their mind, they don’t want this speaker to succeed—they want to undermine them at whatever level they can.”
The congressman argued that until someone with no political ambition for higher office takes charge, the party will continue to eat itself from within. “You’ve got to have somebody that is not running for re-election that wants to be the dadgum speaker and would just come in and just clean this trash can out, or it will never change,” he said.
Burchett warned that the GOP’s internal sabotage is playing directly into Democratic hands. “They’ll do the same thing under the Democrats, except with their Marxist agenda, we could lose everything,” he said. “It’s very short-sighted. I think people want this speaker to fail so that they can run the minority party for four years or whatever, and then take back the majority, and then they will be the speaker, and they will do what’s right.”
