Republican leaders dodged the latest controversial talk about Donald Trump on their way out of Washington, D.C., Thursday, and instead played up their accomplishments and started looking ahead to their future agenda items in Congress.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, asked by a reporter why he refused to discuss Donald Trump, who will head the GOP ticket on Nov. 8, responded, “Because I choose not to.”
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Republican leaders have been steering clear of discussing Trump for months, and in their final meeting with the Capitol Hill press before the November election, their silence underscored what has been an uneasy relationship between lawmakers and their nominee.
Trump is trailing Clinton in recent polls after a disappointing debate performance. In recent days, Trump has been criticized for “fat shaming” a former Miss Universe winner who gained 60 pounds.
With the GOP Senate majority seriously threatened by Democratic challengers and the House GOP majority likely to shrink, Republican leaders have been trying to delink Trump from the overall GOP ticket by promoting their own plans.
“This election is so treacherous, and Trump’s actions so erratic, it makes perfect sense for down-ballot Republican candidates to run on their own and not get tied to the ups and downs of presidential politics,” pollster Ron Faucheux told the Washington Examiner.
Lawmakers on Capitol Hill have grown tired of reporters hounding them about the latest Trump blunder or whether they think the bombastic real estate mogul will hurt GOP Senate and House candidates down the ballot.
“To avoid wasting our time here, this is not something I’m going to discuss today, the implications of the presidential race on the ticket,” McConnell, R-Ky., told reporters Thursday.
House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., has been deflecting Trump questions from the media for weeks but made one beleaguered reference to him on Thursday after he was asked about the prospect of losing Republican seats on Nov. 8.
“I think a good night is keeping our strong majority, keeping the majority in the Senate, and Donald Trump winning, so we have unified Republican government,” Ryan said.
Rather than discussing the GOP ticket, Ryan has been waiving the GOP’s agenda in pamphlet form at nearly every meeting with the media.
“This is why we are here, to show the country that we can get things fixed and that we have a better path, and that is the conversation we’re excited about having with our fellow citizens for the next month and a half,” Ryan said Thursday.
McConnell, even more than Ryan, has avoided discussing Trump because his impact on the ticket is even more critical for the Senate, where more than half a dozen GOP seats could be lost to Democrats, polls show.
“Republican leaders cannot tie their hopes to Trump because his campaign strategy is so unpredictable,” Ron Bonjean, a GOP strategist and former leadership aide in both the House and Senate. “They know it’s imperative to for them to have an insurance policy by running their races on a local level so they are connecting with general election voters.”
McConnell on Thursday touted the Senate’s ability to pass long-stalled legislation with bipartisan support while under the GOP majority. He made no predictions that Trump will win in November.
“I’m here to talk about the United States Senate and what this majority has done and my hope is we have a case to make to the American people that it’s important to continue in the majority,” he said.
