Devin Nunes said goodbye to his BFF, Donald Trump. Will he finally focus on his district?

Shortly before 6 a.m. Pacific time on Wednesday, President Trump and wife Melania boarded Air Force One and took off from Andrews Air Force Base to Florida, his presidency reaching its end.

The moment also marked the conclusion of Rep. Devin Nunes having his BFF in the White House.

Throughout Trump’s four years as president, Nunes, the Tulare Republican, enjoyed access to his Best Friend Forever — aka the president — that precious few in Congress achieved.

Indeed, in the House of Representatives, only the Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield, and staunch GOP member and Trump ally Jim Jordan of Ohio, had as much apparent ability to get the president’s attention.

One would assume Nunes earned loads of benefits for his 22nd District. Sadly, he did not — even when Republicans controlled both houses of Congress for the first two years of Trump’s term. Many residents of the district, covering parts of Fresno and Tulare counties, remain among the poorest in the nation.

Instead, the lasting impressions of Nunes as a leading Trump defender are the so-called “midnight run” to the White House in 2017 while the congressman chaired the House Intelligence Committee; Nunes’ much-panned defense of Trump in impeachment hearings; and Nunes joining fellow Republicans to dispute the 2020 election results in two battleground states.

Now that Trump is gone, will Nunes change and become the statesman leader his district, and the nation, need?

Trump and Nunes were kindred spirits

One commentator, Charlie Sykes of MSNBC, once said Nunes was Trump’s “doppelganger,” and just like the now-former president, the congressman engages in super-heated political rhetoric that demonizes opponents.

Nunes, who has been in office since 2003, has long labeled those he considered opponents — be they environmentalists or Democrats — “communists,” “socialists” or “radical fringe.” He has pushed wild conspiracies in fighting those opponents.

And yet, as chairman of the Intelligence Committee, it was Nunes who violated proper protocol with the so-called “midnight run.” The Washington Post has reported Nunes got intelligence reports at the White House to learn about possible surveillance of Trump and his associates. Nunes did a press conference several days later to talk about the reports without first briefing committee colleagues, a breach of protocol. (Nunes has sued The Post over its account, saying he went to the White House during the day, not the middle of the night).

Nunes’ full-throated defense of Trump took center stage in the 2019 impeachment hearings. In his opening remarks, Nunes pushed a conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, was behind efforts to meddle in the 2016 election. For that, Nunes was rebuked by Trump’s own Russia expert, who said the Ukraine theory had no validity and was being pushed by Russian security services.

However, Nunes had no problem doubting American election integrity, voting with more than 100 House Republicans to object to the results from the battleground states of Arizona and Pennsylvania, despite the final tallies in both states being upheld by their elections officials, and in Arizona by its high court.

Those votes came Jan. 6, the day insurrectionists inspired by Trump broke into Congress to try to disrupt certification of the Electoral College results. Calling the election a fraud was Trump’s final push to keep his office.

Work with Biden

Throughout Trump’s term, The Bee consistently criticized Nunes for caring more about the problems of the president than his own district. Now the nation faces the prospect of a new president seeking to heal the nation from years of rampant partisanship, much of it fueled by officials like Nunes.

Here’s hoping the congressman can reinvent himself over the next two years into a legislator who puts the national interest ahead of raw party politics. He should focus his energies on helping defeat the coronavirus pandemic, rebuild the economy and improve opportunities for all Americans.

Here, too, is a plea for him to become acquainted with the range of citizens who call his district home via in-person meetings, instead of the pay-to-meet donor gatherings he seems to favor.

The BFF is gone and Washington is undergoing a redo. Will Devin Nunes find a new role for himself? Time will tell.

This story was originally published January 20, 2021 at 2:01 PM.