Senate Republicans are feeling frustrated and disappointed by former President Trump’s debate performance and his inability to resist taking the bait from Vice President Harris on side issues such as people leaving his rallies early.
GOP lawmakers fear Trump’s irate rants onstage will be the main takeaway for many undecided voters who tuned into the 90-minute debate, and some senators are hesitating over whether Trump should even agree to another one.
GOP senators are also distancing themselves from Trump’s false claim that he won the 2020 election, which he repeated Tuesday evening.
And they feel bewildered by his wild claim that immigrants are eating dogs and cats in Springfield, Ohio, which came in response to a question about why he opposed a bipartisan Senate bill to secure the border.
“She was well-prepared and she didn’t have to keep repeating the same thing,” said one Republican senator, who requested anonymity to vent frustration about Harris’s solid performance and Trump’s lack of discipline.
“Everybody says: Be more disciplined. It’s just not him,” the lawmaker sighed.
The senator said Trump got sidetracked “into other things,” such as the unsubstantiated claim that Haitian immigrants are eating dogs and cats, instead of framing the debate around the two biggest issues of the race: the economy and inflation.
“I don’t even get what that’s about,” the lawmaker said of the pet-eating claim.
“He’s mad, and she keeps talking about the happiness equation. People want to be happy,” the source observed.
North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis (R) speculated the debate likely pushed some undecided suburban voters in his home state, a key battleground, toward Harris, though he predicted that most voters have already made up their minds in the election.
“I think you may have a few coming out, particularly [in the] female demographic, that’s lean-Harris now,” he said.
Trump and his allies have argued the former president was treated unfairly by the debate’s moderators, who asked follow-up questions to Trump but largely left Harris off the hook.
Still, the GOP senators are also frustrated that Trump failed to pin Harris down with pointed questions about her policy positions and record as vice president.
“I believe we missed a lot of opportunities last night,” Tillis said. “Just ask the question: Do you feel better about the border than you did four years ago? Do you feel better about paying your bills than you did four years ago?
“That’s what this has to be about,” he said.
“It makes a lot more sense to, instead of talking about cats and dogs [getting eaten in Ohio], to talk about 1.5 million got-aways,” he added, referring to immigrants who have illegally slipped past border patrol agents in Arizona and Texas.
Tillis said Trump needs to listen to his advisers who are telling him to focus on the issues.
“If you do not heed the advice of people who are specialized in certain areas about messaging. … When you do not heed the advice of experts in politics, you’re probably going to go into dangerous waters,” he warned.
Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) criticized the moderators.
“I’m with the group that was a little frustrated with ABC in trying to be able to fact-check Trump on the fly but chose to not do it for Kamala Harris,” Lankford said.
But he added that Trump took the bait when Harris tried to get under his skin.
“He did. He did several times,” Lankford acknowledged. “He could have just … said, ‘Four years ago versus the last four years, what does that mean?’”
Trump’s eyes widened at one point early in the debate when Harris claimed people left his rallies out of boredom and exhaustion.
“People don’t leave my rallies. We have the biggest rallies, the most incredible rallies in the history of politics,” the former president insisted defensively, instead of answering a question by ABC News anchor David Muir about why he didn’t support a Senate border security bill, which many GOP senators said would have made the problems at the U.S.-Mexico border worse.
Lankford said he was disappointed there was little discussion on the national deficit or on the threat posed by China.
Lankford noted Trump talked about inflation during the debate and talked about immigration, but many GOP lawmakers said they thought he needed to steer the discussion back to those issues with more discipline.
Even Trump’s biggest allies in the Senate admitted he whiffed a few times in landing shots on Harris.
“He had a lot of missed opportunities,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said. “What I was hoping to see was when she said, ‘You gave us a mess,’ he’d say, ‘No, I didn’t. The border was [the] most secure in four years, mortgage rates were below 3 percent, we had historic peace agreements between the Arabs and the Israelis.’”
Graham argued that so many people show up at Trump’s rallies because they are struggling to afford the basic costs of living and acknowledged that Trump didn’t do a great job at articulating the financial struggle of millions of Americans during Tuesday’s debate.
Another close Trump ally, Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who is in a competitive reelection race, distanced himself from Trump’s unverified claim that Haitian immigrants are eating pets in Ohio.
“I have no idea what’s going on there. Here’s what I can tell you, that in Florida we’ve got a great Haitian community. They’re wonderful people. I put a lot of time in with them. One of my employees is Haitian,” he said. “I go to church with Haitians. … My experience with Haitians in Florida has been very positive.”
Scott also distanced himself from Trump doubling down on his claim that the 2020 election was stolen.
“If you’re the candidate, you get to do whatever you want. I’ve been clear that Biden was the constitutionally elected president of the United States,” he said.
Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.), another Trump ally, declined to comment when asked about Trump reviving the controversy over the 2020 election.
“I make no comment on that,” he said. “Anyone’s individual style, that’s up for them to figure out whether it’s working or not.”
“I don’t think you should say stuff that maybe makes it harder for people to vote for you,” he acknowledged when pressed on Trump’s false claims of a stolen election.
Braun emphasized that he’s supporting Trump because he backs the policies he would implement as president.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who said she won’t vote for Trump, panned his performance.
“I don’t think it was his best evening,” she said.