To hear Republican senators tell it, Donald Trump was simply being Donald Trump when he questioned Vice President Kamala Harris’ race on Wednesday, claiming she only recently “happened to turn Black.”
“Oh, well, you know he’s not serious,” Sen. Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming said, brushing it off. “You know he’s not serious.”
But Trump has only doubled down since then, repeatedly emphasizing that Harris’ mother was of Indian heritage. And even though her father is from Jamaica, it all seems difficult for him to understand.
“I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?” Trump wondered.
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For Lummis, it’s just a big joke. The former president keeps talking about it, she said, “because he likes to goad you. He loves to goad you. You can’t take him seriously when he’s talking about stuff like that.”
In interviews with 10 GOP senators on Thursday, most dismissed questions about Trump’s comments and couldn’t bring themselves to directly criticize him, pivoting instead to how they would personally share their campaign trail messages. Others insisted they hadn’t seen his remarks. Some refused to talk about Trump at all.
“I don’t do interviews on President Trump,” Sen. James Risch of Idaho said before NOTUS could ask about it.
Sen. Rick Scott of Florida insisted he “didn’t hear the comments.”
“Actually, at the time, I was giving a speech on the Senate floor,” he told reporters. “I really was.”
He declined to respond, too, after NOTUS summarized for him what Trump had said. “I’m always talking about issues,” Scott said. “I didn’t see the comment. What I talk to Trump about is issues.”
Issues came up a lot on Thursday. Republican senators would really like to talk about them.
“I’m going to talk policy,” Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa declared when asked about Trump’s comments. “I’m not going to talk about anything that deals with anything except policy, because this election has to be about policy. Not about personality.”
Sen. Deb Fischer is in the same boat. “I’m not commenting on that,” she told NOTUS. “If you’d like to ask me what we’re doing in appropriations, I’d love to talk with you.”
She cut off a follow-up question about whether Trump’s remarks were appropriate: “I’d love to visit with you about policy,” she said with a smile.
Sen. Joni Ernst similarly said Republicans should “just focus on policies.”
“That’s what I’m going to focus on with some of our Senate candidates as I’m out helping them campaign,” she told NOTUS. “I mean, he can just focus on that. She is so radical, she is so far to the left, that most Democrats, even in Iowa, would find some of her approaches appalling.”
But does it hurt Republicans for Trump to be talking about Harris’ race instead?
Ernst wouldn’t commit either way: “I don’t know if it helps or hurts,” she said.
Does it make Ernst uncomfortable?
“You know, a lot has been said about race,” she said. “In this particular race, I’d like to focus on the policies.”
Sen. John Cornyn of Texas also told reporters he wished “we’d talk more about her failed policies.”
But he doesn’t feel like he has the standing to give Trump a course correction. “Donald Trump is Donald Trump,” Cornyn said. “I don’t think he’s looking for my advice or anybody else’s advice about how to run his campaign.”
His Texas colleague, Sen. Ted Cruz, also wanted to focus on “the real issues that matter,” like unlawful immigration. For him, attention going elsewhere isn’t Trump’s fault, however. In Cruz’s telling, the reporters asking about Trump’s comments are to blame.
“The press is eager to engage in these fights. My focus is on Kamala Harris’ extreme record, and that’s what I’m going to talk about,” he said.
When pressed that NOTUS wouldn’t be asking about Trump’s remarks if Trump hadn’t made them, Cruz was dubious.
“Oh, you wouldn’t be talking about it? Really?” he said. “I think we can actually fact-check that statement that you wouldn’t be talking about it. You’re going to talk about it regardless. I get it, you — the press — will attack relentlessly.”
“I’m going to focus on issues and substance,” Cruz continued. “I’m going to focus on policies. I’m going to focus on the policies that actually make a difference in people’s lives.”
But again, should Donald Trump also focus on that instead of Harris’ heritage?
“Seems to me it was actually a reporter who brought that up,” Cruz said.
Trump himself has brought up Harris’ racial identity multiple times. He started off his Thursday, in fact, by posting a picture of Harris wearing a sari.
“Thank you Kamala for the nice picture you sent from many years ago!” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Your warmth, friendship, and love of your Indian Heritage are very much appreciated.”
Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance, also leaned into the identity politics Wednesday night by commenting on the “chameleon-like nature of Kamala Harris.”
“You guys saw yesterday, she was in Georgia, and she put on a southern accent for a Georgia audience,” Vance told a small group of reporters Wednesday night. “She grew up in Vancouver. What the hell is going on here? She is not who she pretends to be.”
But in Cruz’s telling, the GOP ticket’s newfound focus on Harris is a media creation.
“I understand that the press behaves like a school of piranhas, obsessing over whatever comment came out of Donald Trump’s mouth the day before,” Cruz said, arguing that reporters should focus instead on violent crimes by migrants who entered the country through the southern border.
Why Trump can’t show that kind of messaging discipline, however, remains a mystery to many Republicans.
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia thinks Trump “needs to focus on the policies of the Biden-Harris administration.”
“That’s his successful pathway to November,” she said.
And asked why he can’t seem to do that, Capito giggled and threw up her arms in a shrug.
“I can’t answer that one,” she said.
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Haley Byrd Wilt is a reporter at NOTUS.
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