Trump has GOP squirming
With all attention on Hurricane Florence, Republicans are dealing with a separate, familiar kind of storm in the halls of Congress — one of the president’s own making.
As happens often, congressional Republicans were blindsided Thursday morning by a tweet, as President Donald Trump challenged without evidence the official conclusion that nearly 3,000 people died in Puerto Rico from last year’s Hurricane Maria. He falsely claimed the number had been inflated by Democrats “in order to make me look as bad as possible.”
Democrats immediately had cutting words for the president, with various lawmakers calling his tweets “horrifying” and an attempt to “gaslight our nation.”
It wasn’t as simple for Republicans, who did all sorts of familiar dances — ones they’ve been doing since the presidential election — when responding to questions in the hallways of the Capitol. The day quickly became a case study in the tactics that Republicans use to avoid crossing Trump, who rarely forgets a slight.
One frequent tactic is claiming ignorance: “I haven’t read it yet,” said House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of Trump’s tweet as he walked away from reporters.
Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah took a similar line.
“I can’t really comment because I don’t know anything about it,” Hatch said outside of a Senate Judiciary Committee meeting to consider Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination. He declined to comment even after reporters described what Trump wrote.
Another frequent tactic for Republicans is stating that they have a policy of not commenting on Trump’s tweets.
“I don’t want to comment on what the president said,” said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, who went on to ask why estimates of the dead had sharply increased over the last year. Grassley also told reporters that “I don‘t know the president’s motivations on a lot of things unless I talk to him personally.”
Some blamed the media. Texas Sen. John Cornyn, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, defended the federal government’s efforts in Puerto Rico and said he didn’t have any detail on the numbers of the dead.