President Donald Trump has not always received the warmest support from Senate Republicans, and he isn’t jumping up and down to do any favors for some of them.
As Republicans hope to hold onto the White House and the Senate in November’s elections, President Trump is said to have told donors last week that he doesn’t want to help some senators win re-election, though he acknowledged that the fight for the GOP to keep the upper chamber of Congress will be “very tough,” according to the Washington Examiner.
“You lose your soul”
According to the Examiner, Trump’s alleged remarks were first revealed in an anonymously sourced report from The Washington Post about a private fundraiser for the president in Nashville, where Trump faced off with Joe Biden on the debate stage last week.
“I think the Senate is tough actually. The Senate is very tough,” Trump reportedly said, according to an attendee cited by the Post. “There are a couple senators I can’t really get involved in. I just can’t do it. You lose your soul if you do. I can’t help some of them. I don’t want to help some of them.”
Trump has notably clashed with Republican senators such as Utah’s Mitt Romney, who voted to impeach him, and Ben Sasse, a Nebraska lawmaker who recently blasted the president as having put the party on course for an electoral wipeout, as The Guardian reported.
While Trump is extremely popular in the Republican Party, his critics in the media and the pundit class — and Republicans like Sasse, who have never gotten along with the president — have treated his endorsement like a kiss of death, while predicting that the president is virtually certain to lose the White House.
Pollsters have said that Republicans are fighting a tough battle in the Senate, and some vulnerable lawmakers, like Arizona’s Martha McSally, have put Trump at a distance, The Guardian notes.
Anticipation builds for Nov. 3
However, many remain skeptical of the polls after Trump’s shocking 2016 victory, and some have even questioned if there is a concerted effort underway to dampen Trump’s odds in the public view.
While acknowledging that the Senate fight will be competitive, the Republican Party’s national chairwoman, Ronna McDaniel, pushed back on the Washington Post report, dismissing the idea that the party is in any special danger.
“This is a tight race, we know this, but the trend lines are good in these states,” McDaniel said, according to The Guardian. “You’re seeing McSally gain momentum. You also didn’t mention candidates like John James [Michigan] and Jason Lewis [Minnesota], who are in competitive races against Democrat incumbents.”
She went on: “So we’re gonna keep the Senate, we’re working hard to do that.”
At the end of the day, only time will tell whether these anxieties have any basis.
The post Report: Trump privately admits Republicans will have a 'tough' time holding the Senate first appeared on Conservative Institute.
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