Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) told the St. Louis Post Dispatch that he determined very early it was futile to try to alter the way President Trump operates.

Said Blunt: “You can get a whole lot done if you minimize wasting time on things you can’t do anything about.”

He added: “I have been less concerned by that than many of my colleagues have. One, I have never thought from day one that you are going to dramatically change him as a person or the way he communicated through the entire campaign. And I believe there haven’t been very many instances where I have given him advice on this topic — publicly, or any other way. And in spite of all of the complaints he has heard from all kinds of people … about how we wish he’d quit doing that, I think that is a waste of time.”

Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) “has been disinvited from a local GOP gathering in Christian County, Missouri, next month amid a backlash over his vote to block President Donald Trump’s use of emergency powers to build a border wall,” McClatchy reports.

“The senior GOP senator from Missouri was one of 12 Republicans who joined Democrats in voting against Trump’s national emergency declaration, a move that has sparked anger within the president’s base. As a Republican sharing the ballot with Trump in 2016, Blunt squeaked out a narrow 3-point win on Trump’s coattails.”

St. Louis Post-Dispatch: “Days before the 2016 election, Missouri Democrats tried to make an issue of a report that Sen. Roy Blunt’s wife, lobbyist Abigail Blunt, was trying to join a tony suburban Washington, D.C., country club. Allies of Blunt’s opponent, Jason Kander, said it was an example of Blunt’s distance from Missourians. Blunt’s campaign spokeswoman said in October that the senator ‘had never applied to be a member of a country club and has no plans to join one.’”

“But now Blunt and his wife are listed as ‘candidates enjoying summer privileges’ at that very club — the Chevy Chase Club. The country club is one of the capital region’s oldest, where Politico last year reported that membership begins with $80,000 up front, plus $600 in monthly fees.”

“A person familiar with the membership process at the club said the ‘candidates enjoying summer privileges’ list is an early step of a multiyear vetting to fully join the club, and that people who make the list generally become members unless other things, such as financial hardship, intervene.”