Several Senate Republicans criticize strategy, but not substance, of Trump’s comments on Harris
Former President Donald Trump’s comments at the National Association of Black Journalists’ conference Wednesday, in which he questioned Vice President Kamala Harris’ identity as a Black woman, put congressional Republicans in a familiar position: surrounded by reporters asking whether they could defend what their standard-bearer had said.
In response to questions from Axios, Punchbowl News and HuffPost, at least seven Republican senators expressed discomfort with his remarks as a matter of political strategy.
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Among them was Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., who leads Republicans’ Senate campaign arm and said he would rather Trump and other party members talk about Harris’ policy positions.
Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., said seven times that Republicans ought to “focus on policy.”
Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., the chair of the Senate Republican Conference, said five times that Trump “speaks for himself” and added, “I’m going to continue to talk about her record, and I think her record helps Republicans win.”
And Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said, “Any time we’re commenting on anything but this Biden administration’s failed economy, failed border, failed national security, we’re not gaining ground.”
Other Republicans declined to comment — among them Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., who said, “I ain’t getting involved in that.”
Rejections of the substance of what Trump said, as opposed to its political wisdom, were few and far between. Former Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland, who is running for Senate and has long been critical of Trump, was one of the few prominent Republicans to condemn Trump’s false suggestion that Harris is not Black.
“It’s unacceptable and abhorrent to attack Vice President Harris or anyone’s racial identity,” Hogan wrote on social media. “The American people deserve better.”
Even some other Trump-critical Republicans, like Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, focused on strategic considerations. “Maybe they don’t know how to handle the campaign, so they default to issues that simply should not be an issue,” she said of Trump’s team.
Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire, who supported Nikki Haley in the Republican primary but has since backed Trump, wrote in an opinion essay for The New York Times on Thursday, “Attacks like those waged against Vice President Kamala Harris are unserious and don’t meet the moment that American families find themselves in.” (The examples he gave were insults like “bum” and “bottom of the barrel,” not Trump’s questioning of her race.)
“In the past six months, I’ve met countless people who have never voted for Mr. Trump before, but are considering supporting him now because they see what’s going wrong in this country,” Sununu wrote. “But they all say the same thing: They can’t get past his personal attacks.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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