Congressional Republicans try to hide from Trump�s debate performance
They�re not showing the same clear-eyed analysis from Democrats after
Biden�s terrible June 27 debate
https://archive.ph/vBrw9#selection-677.0-706.0

Republicans tried to largely hide from former president Donald Trump�s
debate performance Tuesday, mostly cheering him on or just avoiding the
issue altogether.
Speaking to reporters Wednesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) focused
entirely on a failed government funding plan. What did he think of Trump�s
debate performance, reporters asked him. Johnson walked away, into the
House chamber.
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Across the Capitol, Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), the No. 2 GOP leader, fell
into the passive voice to avoid criticizing Trump when asked about the
missed opportunity to define Vice President Kamala Harris.
�Well, um, that job�s got to get done,� said Thune, who is asking
colleagues to promote him to majority leader.
Who should take up that task? Thune ducked into a closed luncheon for GOP
senators without answering the question.
That�s hardly a ringing endorsement from the two people who, if he won the
presidency, Trump would rely on to advance his agenda on Capitol Hill.
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Almost 11 weeks after congressional Democrats faced a political come-to-
Jesus moment surrounding President Joe Biden�s standing, Republicans
confronted their own version of a presidential nominee who handled his
debate performance with confused, rambling answers that diverged into
territory few voters care about.
But they had far more reserved reactions than those exhibited by Democrats
at the time, who showed up in mourning to a brief series of votes the
morning after Biden�s debate with Trump.
Trump on Tuesday came across more energetic than Biden did back on June 27,
but his grasp of issues left many Republicans privately expressing deep
regret over how their candidate did not do much, if any, of the traditional
debate preparation that has been common practice for a few decades.
Other Republicans just blamed moderators for poor questioning, even though
Trump spoke for more minutes than Harris and had ample opportunities to
drive home those points.
�I think he preps every day. Like President Trump, I do a lot of meetings,
town halls, roundtables, and I think that�s the best prep in the world that
you can do,� Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) said Wednesday.
Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who has won three deeply contested statewide
races through a disciplined, well-funded campaign operation, did not blame
Trump for wandering into strange ideological cul-de-sacs and suggested he
is so incredibly well known to voters that debate performances won�t matter
for him.
�If you don�t know Trump, I don�t know where you�ve been,� Scott said.
�Under a rock?�
Other Republicans begrudgingly offered a slight critique � �missed
opportunity� was the description of choice � noting how Harris never found
herself on the defensive about her two decades of elected service as a
prosecutor, senator and vice president.
�I believe that we missed a lot of opportunities last night,� Sen. Thom
Tillis (R-N.C.) said.
�It was a huge missed opportunity to nail Kamala Harris on some very easy,
easy points. Could have been a lot worse,� said Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Tex.).
How could it have been much worse?
�I mean, I don�t think Trump, you know, became overly emotional or lost his
cool. He remained stoic,� Crenshaw said. �He never looked over at her the
way she kept sneering and jeering at him like a child.�
Contrast that with Democrats� reactions after Biden�s June debate.
�I think people are panic-stricken,� said Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II (D-Mo.),
a 20-year incumbent who serves as a minister and at the time cautioned
colleagues not to make rash decisions. �They�re panic-stricken, and I don�t
think that�s a good time to think.�
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def...
Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who would go on to play a behind-the-scenes
role in helping push Biden aside, told reporters �it could be� when asked
whether that debate was Biden�s �worst night� as president.
Republicans do not feel free to be that critical of Trump out of the fear
that, even if he loses, he will continue to use his influence over base
voters to extract revenge in primaries against the wayward lawmakers.
Marshall, a onetime traditional conservative who reinvented himself as a
far-right agitator, adopted the blame-the-moderators approach to explain
how the Biden-Harris record on border security and crime did not become
focal points.
Yet he has no explanation for why Trump didn�t make more of those issues in
his nearly 43 minutes of speaking, which included plenty of topics that
were not questions from moderators.
�I don�t have an answer,� Marshall said.
Crenshaw, who is not considered a MAGA ally of Trump, even defended Trump�s
diversion into an unproven claim, based on racist tropes, that Haitian
refugees were stealing and eating pets in a small Ohio town, saying the
issue has appeared on television.
�It�s like in the news right now, and it�s disgusting. And it�s, yeah,
there�s Haitian migrants in Ohio reportedly eating ducks and things at the
local parks. Like, I don�t know about pets but, I mean, it�s a thing,�
Crenshaw said.
In his formal statement, released moments after the debate ended, Johnson
began with remarks that read as if they were written before the debate.
�Tonight, President Donald Trump exposed Vice President Kamala Harris for
the dangerous radical she has always been,� the speaker said.
By Wednesday morning, most Republicans had acknowledged that their biggest
regret was that Harris had not been exposed and that, in some regards, she
came off looking presidential.
�People saw, �Oh, actually, she�s an intelligent, capable person who has a
point of view on issues,� and she demonstrated that time and again,� said
Sen. Mitt Romney (Utah), the retiring Republican who opposes Trump�s
election bid but has not endorsed Harris.
Tillis stood out as the rare Republican who openly criticized Trump for not
doing real debate preparations, evident from his lack of ready-to-use quips
to criticize Harris for the Biden administration�s handling of the border
and inflation, issues on which voters tend to favor Republicans.
�There you go again, Harris,� Tillis said, offering his imaginary answer
along the lines that Ronald Reagan used in his debates. �You want to do
everything except talk about an agenda that you were partially responsible
for implementing.�
Trump has openly mocked his senior campaign advisers at rallies and in
interviews for their efforts to get him to focus on policy issues and not
personal attacks or false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.
According to news reports, those advisers made clear Trump was not doing
the traditional mock debates with someone standing in as the opponent and
trying to practice lines.
Tillis recalled how, after trailing his opponent for a good portion of his
2020 election, he worked with senior aides who came up with a line that
they made Tillis rehearse over and over again.
�If you will say that 11 times, I�ll buy you a steak dinner,� his debate
coach said, according to Tillis. He uttered the line 11 times and narrowly
won reelection.
�I got the steak dinner,� he recalled, a bone-in porterhouse, medium-rare.
�When you do not heed the advice of experts in politics, you�re probably
going to go into dangerous waters,� Tillis said.