"Fear to stimulate": Retiring Senate Republican blasts party on migrant caravan

Tennessee Republican Sen. Bob Corker, who announced his retirement at the beginning of this year, criticized Republican rhetoric about a migrant caravan moving through Mexico as "using fear to stimulate people to come out at the polls," the Tennessean reports.

"I've just never been angry at someone who wants to come to the greatest nation on earth and live the kind of life that we lead. To make pejorative statements about all of them…I don’t approve of that. I don't."

The big picture: President Trump has been pushing misleading warnings about the caravan, claiming that a full-on invasion at the southern border is imminent. Corker told the Tennessean that the issue is a "political football" and broke with the conspiracy theory that the caravan is being funded by liberal billionaire George Soros: "If anybody's funding it, it's some Republican donor, because it has obviously turned into an election issue that has benefited the Republican side."