Denver Post: 'It's unfortunate' Cory Gardner can't defend his home state from Trump

The failures of Sen. Cory Gardner (R-CO) continue to mount, according to a Sunday editorial from the Denver Post.

Instead of expressing anger as Trump swipes millions of dollars from Colorado’s military families to build a border wall, Gardner “is still squarely in Donald Trump’s corner,” the Post editors wrote.

Rather than attack Trump, who Gardner has already endorsed for 2020, Gardner “lashed out at Democrats in a pitiful attempt to rewrite history in his favor.”

The episode stems from Trump’s decision to declare a “state of emergency” at the border after Congress rejected his request for $5 billion to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. During his 2016 campaign, Trump repeatedly claimed Mexico would pay for the wall, but when he broke that promise, Trump decided to steal money from American military families across the nation and world to pay for it.

Last week, the Pentagon announced that it would be swiping $8 million from a space control construction project at Colorado’s Peterson Air Force Base and diverting that money to the border wall. In 2017, the military said failure to fund the Peterson project would result in “operational and strategic mission impacts due to inadequate facilities.”

Gardner had an opportunity to stop Trump but used his vote in the Senate to instead side with him, after receiving assurances that Trump would steal money from military families in other states — not his own. At the time of his vote, the Denver Post wrote an editorial expressing their regret for endorsing Gardner in 2014.

Trump’s emergency declaration was “a constitutional crisis and one of Colorado’s two senators has failed the test,” the editorial board wrote in March.

Now it turns out that Gardner couldn’t be trusted to protect Colorado’s military families like he said he would.

“We think it’s unfortunate Gardner can’t defend Colorado and the U.S. Constitution at the same time, or even one at a time, or just one or the other,” the board wrote on Sunday.

The editorial board reflected the sentiment of Colorado and national Democrats looking to oust Gardner come November 2020.

“Spineless Senator Gardner is so afraid to break with President Trump that he’s selling the same empty promises to his own constituents and our military community is paying the price,” Alyssa Roberts, spokesperson for the Colorado Democratic Party, said in a Thursday statement. “Colorado deserves a senator who will stand up for what’s right, and this is yet another example of Senator Gardner’s failure to do so.”

Gardner’s “self-serving politics” and “spineless inability to stand up to the White House” is responsible for Colorado losing out on millions of dollars in funding for military projects, Stewart Boss, spokesperson for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said on Thursday. Gardner “failed a basic test of leadership,” he added.

Gardner is running for reelection in a state that has tilted strongly in favor of Democrats in the past two elections. Democrats now control every statewide elected office and both legislative chambers, and Gardner is often referred to as one of the country’s most vulnerable Republican incumbents.

To add to Gardner’s worries, popular Colorado ex-Gov. John Hickenlooper dropped his presidential bid and is now vying to take on Gardner in 2020. Hickenlooper joins a crowded field of Democrats jockeying for the opportunity to face Gardner next year.

On top of that, Gardner now has a blistering editorial calling out his feckless decision to turn his back on both his state and the Constitution.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.