And he’s right to do so.

by Gordon C. Morse

Around 12:30 p.m. today, U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Virginia, appeared on MSNBC with Katy Tur to discuss President Trump’s address last night before Congress and a telling moment emerged mid-way through the conversation.

Warner has hit his stride in recent years as a member of the Senate. He has a personality built for executive postings and loved being governor. Being in the Senate obliged some adjustments and the institution itself frustrated him. I know this because he said so and often.

But then, a few years ago, the Democrats got into the majority and Warner became chairman of the Intelligence Committee. Suddenly, he was a supremely happy guy. All his impulses favoring direct, hands-on action kicked in and his long efforts to keep matters ecumenical on the Intelligence Committee -– to avoid partisanship and focus on the national interest -– paid off. By nearly all accounts, Warner fast became a very effective chairman.

He lost that position when the Democrats came up short in the 2024 election and doubtless that proved disappointing. But you don’t get any sense of personal deflation. Over time, Warner has developed an easy, graceful approach to on-air interviews and his seniority, even as a member of a minority, still works for him.

So, today, Warner was sharply critical of Trump’s speech (as you would expect) and made a pointed reference to a VA facility in Fredericksburg already undercut by Trump’s federal hiring freeze.

This 471,000-square-foot facility – the Fredericksburg Veterans Affairs Healthcare Center – consolidates three former sites within the Fredericksburg area and opened this week as one of the largest VA outpatient clinics in the nation, according to the Fredericksburg Free Press.

This center, once fully up to speed, could serve a potential 35,000 veterans and so it was not surprising that Warner’s compatriot in the U.S. Senate, Tim Kaine (D-Virginia) and U.S. Rep. Eugene Vindman (D-7th District) were on hand, as well.

Will it ever get up to speed? That’s the question Warner raised during Tur’s interview and he’s obviously worried. The facility, he said, is almost 500 employees short of capacity.

Warner will need to pursue this issue and attach some faces to it. The great Democratic Party political disease is to discuss government agencies and programs largely in the abstract. A few living, breathing, named citizens matter more than hundreds never identified or referred to on some categorical basis.

“Pursuit” also requires development. Bring the issue home. What are the exact effects, in detail, of inadequate staffing for this just-opened –- and, presumably, expensive –- veterans facility.

Since Trump took office, Democrats have generally gone into shock over just about everything. Trump needs only to raise an eyebrow and he’s sure to have some Democrats flopping around on the ground making funny noises. In some respects, it’s been very easy for the president. The Democrats are hideously predictable.

Trump, in case you have not noticed, is less so. Look at what Trump has done on the tariff’-s just since yesterday. He’s moved. It’s incremental, of course, and the larger questions are still valid, i.e., what will the effects be on the economy? But he did move and he will move again and again, based on his sense of how things are getting received.

The thing about Trump to keep in mind (this is just my perspective and I may be as screwy as the next person) is that he’s doing populism. The idea of populism is to be popular. That’s the only true goal. Ergo, if what you’re doing at any given moment proves unpopular, you change what you’re doing. Just like that.

The press always thinks -– how many times have we seen this? -– that it has you dead to rights if you move from one position to another. You’ve been inconsistent, they sternly charge. You said one thing one day and the opposite the day afterwards. They wag their finger at you and say, “Bad politician.”

But nobody really cares much. Life is inconsistent. It moves around. Circumstances shift, change and mutate. As you take in new information, you reevaluate. That is the politically responsible thing to do.

I think it’s true that trust and integrity are closely associated with honesty and authenticity. Just don’t get carried away with it. “Consistency,” the old line goes, “is the last refuge of the unimaginative.”

Which is why I was amused and encouraged by Warner’s somewhat unexpected admission during his interview with Tur. I was watching from the kitchen table and have no transcript, but she asked him about an earlier interview he’d done with Fox News, and Warner, without being prompted, said he’d failed to express himself well during that interview.

Tur actually listens to the answers of the people she’s questioning (a trait rare on MSNBC) and immediately asked, “What do you mean?” – or something to that effect.

Warner then explained that he’d basically said on Fox that Trump got it right on the border, but that he would have preferred to have expressed that sentiment differently.

I love this stuff, because it’s one or the other of two things: After that interview with Fox, Warner either had a conversation with a staff member or a constituent.

If it happened to be with a staff member, Warner would have heard a quiet, but earnest voice say, “You know, senator, you just said [X] and is that what you meant to say?”

Or, if a constituent was involved, the question –- spoken at a somewhat higher volume — would have been, “You know, senator, I heard what you said on Fox and you’re a complete moron.”

Regardless, my guess is that Warner went on Fox and too closely said what he thought, that the Democratic Party position on immigration, the border and all the rest, stunk to high heaven, that Biden took an already flawed conception and made matters demonstrably worse.

The key word there is “demonstrably,” because if you can see the physical effects, that’s when the politics really, really kicks in. A few years ago, I saw the refugee camp in Calais, France, and its scale was incredible. How highly developed Western societies could botch this up so badly is a wonder to behold.

If you care to read something that’s a bit lengthy but thoughtful on immigration, you may wish to run through this. There are alternatives out there.

Warner clearly wishes to work his way through this issue and find happier ground to defend. That will entail making adjustments and risking inconsistencies. He’s right to do so. Some recalibration; some redeployment -– all to the better.

The alternative is to go down with the ship and that makes no sense at all.

Gordon C. Morse has been writing commentary and speeches in Virginia since 1983. This column his republished with permission from his Substack account Heart’s Desire.