Donald Trump’s attack on Gov. Susana Martinez, R-N.M., isn’t bothering the House Republicans who are among Trump’s biggest supporters.
“Trump says what he thinks and that’s what people like about him,” Rep. Lou Barletta, R-Pa., who endorsed Trump in March, told the Washington Examiner. “And that doesn’t mean that tomorrow he won’t find good things about the governor, but he says what’s on his mind. That’s what people like about him.”
Trump criticized Martinez repeatedly during a campaign rally in her home state Tuesday evening, despite the fact that they hail from the same political party. It’s an unusual move for any nominee, raising questions about whether he also plans to punish some of the vulnerable GOP senators who have kept their distance from him up to this point in the election season.
New York Rep. Chris Collins, the first House Republican to endorse Trump, said Martinez provoked the criticism by refusing to endorse Trump until she learns more about how he “plans to address issues that directly affect New Mexicans,” as one of her spokesmen put it earlier this month.
“When she basically was not enthusiastic about endorsing him, you could call that kind of a swing, so he kind of punched back,” Collins told the Examiner. “That’s Donald being Donald.”
By that standard, several Republicans who have withheld their endorsements from Trump risk a verbal beating from the GOP nominee. House Speaker Paul Ryan is the most prominent Republican to maintain that he is “not ready” to back Trump, but the list includes several of the GOP senators who need to win re-election in order for Republicans to remain in control of the upper chamber.
For instance, Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey wrote an op-ed saying that Trump might never gain his support.
“I am inclined to support the nominee of my party,” Toomey wrote in a May 9 op-ed. “There could come a point at which the differences are so great as to be irreconcilable. I hope that doesn’t happen, but I have never been a rubber stamp for my party’s positions or its candidates.”
Trump’s campaign signaled last week that he’d be forgiving of such Republicans. Paul Manafort, one of his senior advisers, told Senate GOP chiefs-of-staff that their bosses should feel free to maintain a safe distance from Trump if that’s what it takes for them to win re-election.
But the attack on Martinez contradicted that logic, intentionally or not. “That’s why I think it’s better to get on board with Trump,” one lawmaker who supports Trump said on condition of anonymity.
Barletta allowed that Trump could damage Toomey if he attacked the Senate freshman the way he attacked Martinez. “I don’t think it would help,” he said with a laugh, before predicting that Trump wouldn’t make such a move. “Listen, there’s a difference between hitting a governor and a senator, and the difference is we need the Senate, and he knows it. I would be surprised to see that.”
If that prediction proves incorrect, at least one Republican thinks the intra-party feuding could have foreign policy benefits. “Donald Trump has always said he’s a great counter-puncher,” said the lawmaker who spoke on condition of anonymity. “I think this is a message to people around the world: If you hit the United States, the United States is going to hit you back. He’s a counterpuncher. You’re not going to push us around.”
