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    McConnell and Other Senate Republicans Criticize Trump’s Talk on Immigrants

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    The minority leader took an oblique swipe at Donald Trump’s rhetoric about migrants “poisoning the blood” of the country, but others like Senator Tommy Tuberville defended him.When Mitch McConnell, the top Republican in the Senate, was asked about former President Donald J. Trump’s now-standard stump line claiming that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” Senator McConnell delivered an indirect but contemptuous response.“Well, it strikes me it didn’t bother him when he appointed Elaine Chao secretary of transportation,” Mr. McConnell, the Senate minority leader, said. Ms. Chao, who was born in Taiwan and immigrated to America as a child, is married to Mr. McConnell.Mr. McConnell referred to a feud that has simmered for more than a year over the former president’s racist attacks against Ms. Chao. Mr. Trump, often referring to her by the derisive nickname “Coco Chow,” has suggested that she — and by extension her husband, Mr. McConnell — are beholden to China because of her connections to the country.Mr. Trump repeated his “poisoning the blood” claim at a rally in New Hampshire on Saturday, prompting an outburst of criticism from Senate Republicans this week.Senator Susan Collins of Maine told a reporter for The Independent that the former president’s remarks were “deplorable.”“That was horrible that those comments are just — they have no place, particularly from a former president,” Ms. Collins said.Senator Mike Rounds, Republican of South Dakota, denounced Mr. Trump’s language as “unacceptable.”“I think that that rhetoric is very inappropriate,” Mr. Rounds said, according to NBC News. “But this administration’s policies are feeding right into it. And so, I disagree with that. I think we should celebrate our diversity.”Mr. McConnell’s own oblique retort, which did not directly criticize Mr. Trump’s language, signaled that even some of the former president’s boldest Republican critics on Capitol Hill are treading lightly, as he dominates the polls in the Republican presidential race.Mr. McConnell has spent years trying to steer the party away from Mr. Trump after the riot at the Capitol by Trump supporters on Jan. 6, 2021, in large part because he views the former president as a political loser. Often when Mr. McConnell criticizes Mr. Trump he does so by saying his behavior would make it hard for him to win another presidential election.Senate Republicans are also trying to negotiate a deal with the White House, proposing sweeping restrictions on migration in exchange for approving additional military aid to Ukraine and Israel, a top priority for President Biden.Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the Senate majority leader, denounced Mr. Trump’s remarks on Tuesday as “despicable” but signaled that Senate Democrats would push forward with negotiations on border restrictions.“We all know there’s a problem at the border,” Mr. Schumer said. “The president does. Democrats do. And we’re going to try to solve that problem consistent with our principles.”Other Senate Republicans more delicately admonished Mr. Trump for his remarks, referring to either their own immigrant heritage or the principle that America is a nation of immigrants.“My grandfather is an immigrant, so that’s not a view I share,” John Thune, the second-ranking Senate Republican, said in a CNN interview on Monday. He added, “We are a nation of immigrants, but we’re also a nation of laws,” describing illegal immigration as “a runaway train at the Southern border.”But other Senate Republicans embraced Mr. Trump’s language. Senator Tommy Tuberville, who had defended white supremacists serving in the military before retracting his remarks this year, said that Mr. Trump’s attacks on immigrants did not go far enough.“I’m mad he wasn’t tougher than that,” Mr. Tuberville told a reporter for The Independent. “When you see what’s happening at the border? We’re being overrun. They’re taking us over.”Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio said it was “objectively and obviously true” that “illegal immigrants were poisoning the blood of the country.” He also scolded the reporter who asked him about Mr. Trump’s remarks, accusing her of using Mr. Trump’s words to try to “narrow the limits of debate on immigration in this country.”Representative Nicole Malliotakis, the lone Republican in a House seat in New York City, denied that Mr. Trump’s remarks were referring to immigrants.“He didn’t say the words ‘immigrants,’ I think he was talking about the Democratic policies,” she said in a CNN interview on Monday. “Look, I know that some are trying to make it seem like Trump is anti-immigrant. The reality is, he was married to immigrants, he has hired immigrants.” More

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      How McConnell Hopes to Thwart Trump in the Midterms

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      Senator Mitch McConnell is working furiously to bring allies to Washington who will buck Donald J. Trump. It’s not going according to plan.PHOENIX — For more than a year, former President Donald Trump has berated Gov. Doug Ducey of Arizona, savaging him for refusing to overturn the state’s presidential results and vowing to oppose him should he run for the Senate this year.In early December, though, Mr. Ducey received a far friendlier message from another former Republican president. At a golf tournament luncheon, George W. Bush encouraged him to run against Senator Mark Kelly, a Democrat, suggesting the Republican Party needs more figures like Mr. Ducey to step forward.“It’s something you have to feel a certain sense of humility about,” the governor said this month of Mr. Bush’s appeal. “You listen respectfully, and that’s what I did.”Mr. Bush and a band of anti-Trump Republicans led by Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky are hoping he does more than listen.As Mr. Trump works to retain his hold on the Republican Party, elevating a slate of friendly candidates in midterm elections, Mr. McConnell and his allies are quietly, desperately maneuvering to try to thwart him. The loose alliance, which was once thought of as the G.O.P. establishment, for months has been engaged in a high-stakes candidate recruitment campaign, full of phone calls, meetings, polling memos and promises of millions of dollars. It’s all aimed at recapturing the Senate majority, but the election also represents what could be Republicans’ last chance to reverse the spread of Trumpism before it fully consumes their party.Mr. McConnell for years pushed Mr. Trump’s agenda and only rarely opposed him in public. But the message that he delivers privately now is unsparing, if debatable: Mr. Trump is losing political altitude and need not be feared in a primary, he has told Mr. Ducey in repeated phone calls, as the Senate leader’s lieutenants share polling data they argue proves it.In conversations with senators and would-be senators, Mr. McConnell is blunt about the damage he believes Mr. Trump has done to the G.O.P., according to those who have spoken to him. Privately, he has declared he won’t let unelectable “goofballs” win Republican primaries.History doesn’t bode well for such behind-the-scene efforts to challenge Mr. Trump, and Mr. McConnell’s hard sell is so far yielding mixed results. The former president has rallied behind fewer far-right candidates than initially feared by the party’s old guard. Yet a handful of formidable contenders have spurned Mr. McConnell’s entreaties, declining to subject themselves to Mr. Trump’s wrath all for the chance to head to a bitterly divided Washington.Last week, Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland announced he would not run for Senate, despite a pressure campaign that involved his wife. Mr. Ducey is expected to make a final decision soon, but he has repeatedly said he has little appetite for a bid.Mr. Trump, however, has also had setbacks. He’s made a handful of endorsements in contentious races, but his choices have not cleared the Republican field, and one has dropped out.How Donald J. Trump Still LoomsGrip on G.O.P.: Mr. Trump remains the most powerful figure in the Republican Party. However, there are signs his control is loosening.Trump vs. DeSantis: Tensions between the ex-president and Florida governor show the challenge confronting the G.O.P. in 2022.Midterms Effect: Mr. Trump has become a party kingmaker, but his involvement in state races worries many Republicans.Just the Beginning: For many Trump supporters who marched on Jan. 6, the day was not a disgraced insurrection but the start of a movement.If Mr. Trump muscles his preferred candidates through primaries and the general election this year, it will leave little doubt of his control of the Republican Party, build momentum for another White House bid and entrench his brand of politics in another generation of Republican leaders.If he loses in a series of races after an attempt to play kingmaker, however, it would deflate Mr. Trump’s standing, luring other ambitious Republicans into the White House contest and providing a path for the party to move on.“No one should be afraid of President Trump, period,” said Senator Susan Collins of Maine, who won in 2020 without endorsing the then-president and has worked with Mr. McConnell to try to woo anti-Trump candidates.While there is some evidence that Mr. Trump’s grip on Republican voters has eased, polls show the former president remains overwhelmingly popular in the party. Among politicians trying to win primaries, no other figure’s support is more ardently sought.“In my state, he’s still looked at as the leader of the party,” Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri said.The proxy war isn’t just playing out in Senate races.Mr. Trump is backing primary opponents to incumbent governors in Georgia and Idaho, encouraged an ally to take on the Alabama governor and helped drive Gov. Charlie Baker of Massachusetts into retirement by supporting a rival. The Republican Governors Association, which Mr. Ducey leads, this week began pushing back, airing a television commercial defending the Georgia governor, Brian Kemp, against his opponent, former Senator David Perdue. It was the first time in the group’s history they’ve financed ads for an incumbent battling a primary.“Trump has got a lot of chips on the board,” said Bill Haslam, the former Tennessee governor.Mr. McConnell has been careful in picking his moments to push back against the former president. Last week, he denounced a Republican National Committee resolution orchestrated by Mr. Trump’s allies that censured two House Republican Trump critics.As the former president heckles the soon-to-be 80-year-old Kentuckian as an “Old Crow,” Mr. McConnell’s response has been to embrace the moniker: Last week, he sent an invitation for a reception in which donors who hand over $5,000 checks can take home bottles of the Kentucky-made Old Crow brand bourbon signed by the senator.Mr. McConnell has been loath to discuss his recruitment campaign and even less forthcoming about his rivalry with Mr. Trump. In an interview last week, he warded off questions about their conflict, avoiding mentioning Mr. Trump’s name even when it was obvious to whom he was referring.If Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who is an outspoken Trump antagonist running for Senate this fall, wins her primary, it will show that “endorsements from some people didn’t determine the outcome,” he said.Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska at the Capitol last week. Senator Mitch McConnell and Mr. Trump are at odds over her reelection bid.Sarahbeth Maney/The New York TimesMs. Murkowski appears well-positioned at the moment, with over $4 million on hand while her Trump-backed rival, Kelly Tshibaka, has $630,000.“He’s made very clear that you’ve been there for Alaska, you’ve been there for the team and I’m going to be there for you,” Ms. Murkowski said of Mr. McConnell’s message to her.Even more pointedly, Mr. McConnell vowed that if Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the second-ranking Senate Republican, faces the primary that Mr. Trump once promised, Mr. Thune “will crush whoever runs against him.” (The most threatening candidate, Gov. Kristi Noem, has declined.)The Senate Republican leader has been worried that Mr. Trump will tap candidates too weak to win in the general election, the sort of nominees who cost the party control of the Senate in 2010 and 2012.“We changed the business model in 2014, and have not had one of these goofballs nominated since,” he told a group of donors on a private conference call last year, according to a recording obtained by The New York Times.Mr. McConnell has sometimes decided to pick his battles — in Georgia, he acceded to Herschel Walker, a former football star and Trump-backed candidate, after failing to recruit Mr. Perdue to rejoin the Senate. He also came up empty-handed in New Hampshire, where Gov. Chris Sununu passed on a bid after an aggressive campaign that also included lobbying from Mr. Bush.In Maryland, Mr. Hogan was plainly taken with the all-out push to recruit him, although he declined to take on Senator Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat.“Elaine Chao was working over my wife,” Mr. Hogan recalled of a lunch, first reported by The Associated Press, between Ms. Chao, the former cabinet secretary and wife of Mr. McConnell, and Maryland’s first lady, Yumi Hogan. “Her argument was, ‘You can really be a voice.’”Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland, left, with Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland in Baltimore. Mr. McConnell has tried to recruit Mr. Hogan as a Senate candidate.Al Drago for The New York TimesMr. McConnell also dispatched Ms. Collins and Senator Mitt Romney of Utah to lobby Mr. Hogan. That campaign culminated last weekend, when Mr. Romney called Mr. Hogan to vent about the R.N.C.’s censure, tell him Senate Republicans needed anti-Trump reinforcements and argue that Mr. Hogan could have more of a platform in his effort to remake the party as a sitting senator rather than an ex-governor.“I’m very interested in changing the party and that was the most effective argument,” said Mr. Hogan, who is believed to be considering a bid for the White House.Mr. Romney lamented Mr. Hogan’s decision and expressed frustration. He claimed most party leaders share their view of the former president, but few will voice it in public.“I don’t see new people standing up and saying, ‘I’m going to do something here which may be politically unpopular’ — in public at least,” Mr. Romney said.At Mar-a-Lago, courtship of the former president’s endorsement has been so intense, and his temptation to pick favorites so alluring, that he regrets getting involved in some races too soon, according to three Republican officials who’ve spoken to him.In Pennsylvania’s open Senate race, Mr. Trump backed Sean Parnell, who withdrew after a bitter custody battle with his estranged wife. And in Alabama, the former president rallied to Representative Mo Brooks to succeed Senator Richard Shelby, who’s retiring. But Mr. Brooks, who attended the rally that preceded the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, is struggling to gain traction.One Republican strategist who has visited with Mr. Trump said the former president was increasingly suspicious of the consultants and donors beseeching him.“He has become more judicious so not everybody who runs down to Mar-a-Lago for the weekend gets endorsed on Monday,” said Senator Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, another Trump ally.Mr. Trump has made clear he wants the Senate candidates he backs to oust Mr. McConnell from his leadership perch, and even considered making a pledge to do so a condition of his endorsement. Few have done so to date, a fact Mr. McConnell considers a victory. “Only two of them have taken me on,” he crowed, alluding to Ms. Tshibaka in Alaska, and Eric Greitens, the former Missouri governor running for an open seat.But Mr. McConnell’s biggest get yet would be Mr. Ducey.Mr. Trump, right, has supported Representative Mo Brooks’s run for a Senate seat in Alabama.Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesWith broad popularity and three statewide victories to his name, the term-limited governor and former ice cream chain executive would be a strong candidate against Mr. Kelly, who has nearly $19 million in the bank — more than double the combined sum of the existing Republican field.To some of the state’s Republicans, Mr. Ducey could send a critical message in a swing state. “It would say we’re getting tired of this,” said Rusty Bowers, speaker of the Arizona State House, who encouraged Mr. Ducey to stand up to Mr. Trump’s “bully caucus.”Mr. Ducey also has been lobbied by the G.O.P. strategist Karl Rove, the liaison to Mr. Bush, who sought to reassure the governor that he could win.Mr. Ducey said he believed that this year’s “primaries are going to determine the future of the party.” However, he sounded much like Mr. Hogan and Mr. Sununu when asked about his enthusiasm for jumping into another campaign.“This is the job I’ve wanted,” he said.He noted there was one prominent member of the Trump administration, though, who has been supportive. Former Vice President Mike Pence “encouraged me to stay in the fight,” Mr. Ducey said. More

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      John Thune, No. 2 Senate Republican, Will Seek Re-election

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      The three-term South Dakotan had considered retiring because of family concerns and the continuing grip of former President Donald J. Trump on the Republican Party.WASHINGTON — Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the second-ranking Senate Republican, announced on Saturday that he would seek re-election, after an aggressive lobbying campaign by colleagues prompted him to put aside concerns about the future of his party and pursue a fourth term.“I’m asking South Dakotans for the opportunity to continue serving them in the U.S. Senate,” Mr. Thune, the minority whip, said in a statement, adding that he could deliver for his state.“I am uniquely positioned to get that job done,” he said.The South Dakotan, who turned 61 on Friday, had recently told associates that he was considering retirement, complaining about the strain of congressional service and privately expressing concern about former President Donald J. Trump’s continuing grip on the Republican Party.But by seeking re-election in a heavily conservative state, Mr. Thune is well positioned to win again and potentially succeed Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, as the Senate’s top Republican.A host of Senate Republicans leaned on Mr. Thune in recent weeks to run again, but Mr. McConnell was especially aggressive and met privately with him this past week. The Kentucky Republican turns 80 next month and has made clear that he wants to remain his party’s Senate leader into 2023, when he would become the longest-serving party leader in the chamber’s history.It is unclear how long Mr. McConnell will serve beyond then, though, an open question that helped lure Mr. Thune to seek another term. Mr. Thune has told associates he is confident he would have the support to succeed Mr. McConnell when the leader exits.The South Dakotan would face competition for the post, however. Senator John Cornyn of Texas preceded Mr. Thune as the party whip and has indicated his interest in succeeding Mr. McConnell, as has Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, currently the No. 3 Republican.For now, Mr. Thune will have to navigate re-election in South Dakota, which rejected its two most famous senators, George S. McGovern and Tom Daschle, both Democrats, in their bids for fourth terms.Mr. Thune’s only real obstacle, though, would be a primary. He put off a decision on running until the new year because he wanted to minimize the time a potential Republican rival would have to mount a primary challenge — and to limit Mr. Trump’s window for mischief-making.The former president lashed out at Mr. Thune at the end of 2020 after the senator said Mr. Trump’s unfounded election objections would go down “like a shot dog” in the Senate.That prompted the former president, who maintains an iron grip on the Republican Party and has already intervened in a series of 2022 primaries to consolidate his power even further, to deride Mr. Thune as “Mitch’s boy” and a “RINO,” or a Republican in name only.“He will be primaried in 2022, political career over!!!” Mr. Trump warned at the time.But no major primary challenger has emerged. And Mr. Trump’s allies in the Senate said last month that the former president would be unlikely to oppose Mr. Thune if the senator appeared likely to win renomination.Once a hub of prairie populism, South Dakota has turned deeply red in the last two decades, a transition that began with Mr. Thune’s defeat of Mr. Daschle in 2004. More

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      John Thune, a Likely Successor to Mitch McConnell, Weighs Retirement

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      Mr. Thune, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, is considering giving up his South Dakota seat because of both family concerns and Donald Trump’s enduring hold on the G.O.P.WASHINGTON — Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the second-ranking Senate Republican and a potential future leader, is seriously considering retiring after next year, a prospect that has set off an intensifying private campaign from other Republicans urging him to seek re-election.Mr. Thune is only 60, but a combination of family concerns and former President Donald J. Trump’s enduring grip on the Republican Party have prompted the senator, who is in his third term, to tell associates and reporters in his home state that 2022 could be his last year in Congress.His departure would be a blow to South Dakota, which has enjoyed outsize influence in Washington, and could upend Senate Republicans’ line of succession. Mr. Thune has been open about his ambition to lead his party’s caucus after Senator Mitch McConnell makes way, and quiet but unmistakable jockeying is already underway between him and Senators John Cornyn of Texas and John Barrasso of Wyoming.“John is the logical successor should Mitch decide to not run again for leader,” Senator Susan Collins of Maine said of Mr. Thune, while noting that Mr. McConnell’s hold on their caucus remained “very secure.”That Mr. Thune would even entertain retirement with the chance to ascend to Senate Republican leader illustrates both the strain of today’s Congress and the shadow Mr. Trump casts over the party. The senator’s departure would represent yet another exit, perhaps the most revealing one yet, by a mainstream Senate Republican who has grown frustrated with the capital’s political environment and the former president’s loyalty demands. The exodus began in 2018 with Senators Jeff Flake and Bob Corker retiring rather than facing primaries, and has accelerated this year.Part of Mr. Thune’s hesitation owes to Mr. Trump and the potential for the former president — who lashed out at Mr. Thune early this year when the senator rejected his attempts to overturn the election — to intervene in South Dakota’s Senate primary race. But the larger factor may be the longer-range prospect of taking over the Senate Republican caucus with Mr. Trump still in the wings or as the party’s standard-bearer in 2024.Mr. Thune has said he will decide his intentions over the holidays. Yet a number of his friends and colleagues have become convinced that he is serious about leaving public life.Among those alarmed is Mr. McConnell himself, who one adviser said had “leaned in” on pushing Mr. Thune to run again.“I certainly hope that he will run for re-election, and that’s certainly what I and others have been encouraging him to do all year long,” Mr. McConnell said in an interview.He is hardly alone.A range of Senate Republicans — from moderates and Trump targets like Ms. Collins to Trump allies like Kevin Cramer of North Dakota — have lobbied Mr. Thune over dinner, on the Senate floor and, since lawmakers went home for Christmas recess, via text messages.“I let him know how much I appreciate him,” said Mr. Cramer, who has known Mr. Thune since they were young executive directors of their state parties. “He knows both Dakotas really need him.”Mr. Thune first angered Mr. Trump during the former president’s final days in office, when Mr. Thune said any challenge to the election results “would go down like a shot dog.” Mr. Trump derided the senator as “Mitch’s boy” and urged Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota to run against him in the state’s primary.Since then, though, Mr. Trump has trained his fire on Mr. McConnell, whom he has labeled “Old Crow,” and largely ignored Mr. Thune.Two top Senate Republican allies of Mr. Trump said he would probably refrain from targeting Mr. Thune simply because the senator, who is popular at home and has a well-stocked campaign war chest, is unlikely to lose a primary in the state that first elected him to Congress in 1996.“He likes winners, and John Thune is a winner,” said Mr. Cramer, predicting that Mr. Trump would at most be “a nuisance” to Mr. Thune.Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina was similarly blunt about why Mr. Thune need not sweat a competitive primary. “Trump worries about his win-loss record,” said Mr. Graham, who is the de facto liaison between the former president and Senate Republicans.Mr. Graham, who along with Mr. Thune and Ms. Collins is part of a small group of senators who often dine together in Washington, said that before they left for the holidays, he had reassured Mr. Thune about any Trumpian intervention.“I told John that’ll be fine,” Mr. Graham recalled. “John will be fine.”Asked if he thought the threat of a Trump-inspired primary bothered Mr. Thune, Mr. McConnell said, “No. No, I don’t.”But if Mr. Thune ascended to Republican Senate leadership, Mr. Trump could still prove a headache.The former president does not have the influence in the Senate, where 19 Republicans defied him to support the infrastructure bill, that he does in the House. Yet Mr. Trump’s regular attacks on Mr. McConnell and on anything that has the air of cooperation with President Biden are not lost on Senate Republicans.The Infrastructure Bill at a GlanceCard 1 of 5The bill receives final approval. More

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      Why Kristi Noem Is Rising Quickly as a Republican Prospect for 2024

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      Ms. Noem, the governor of South Dakota, has defied coronavirus restrictions and eagerly projects a rugged Great Plainswoman image. Her moves have stirred both support and conflict in the G.O.P.PIERRE, S.D. — With Republicans hungry to cultivate their next generation of national leaders, it is not a Capitol Hill comer or a veteran battleground-state politician who is stirring interest by fusing Trumpism with a down-home conservatism spin. It is the first-term governor of South Dakota, Kristi Noem, a rancher who delights in sharing images of herself shooting pheasants and riding horses.Ms. Noem began drawing wider attention last year for cozying up to President Donald J. Trump — so much so that she inspired suspicion that she was angling to replace Mike Pence on the 2020 ticket — and hosting him at a July 4 Mount Rushmore event where she gave him a model of the monument with his face included. Her defiance of coronavirus restrictions and her eagerness to project a rugged Great Plainswoman image helped her come in second in a 2024 straw poll of far-right conservatives looking for candidates if Mr. Trump doesn’t run again.But her approach to politics has sometimes made for rocky relations with her base. Late last month, she got herself into a showdown with the Republican-controlled State Legislature over her veto of a bill barring transgender girls from school sports. And as some party leaders were pressing her to resolve that fight, she prompted eye-rolling at home by inserting herself in an unrelated skirmish — over Lil Nas X’s “Satan Shoes.”“We are in a fight for the soul of our nation,” she wrote on Twitter, picking a fight with the rapper over his endorsement of $1,000 sneakers featuring a pentagram and, ostensibly, a drop of blood.If Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is widely seen as the brash heir apparent to Mr. Trump, and senators like Josh Hawley and Tom Cotton are attempting to put a more ideological frame on Trumpism, Ms. Noem is trying to cement her place as the only female Trump ally echoing the former president’s trigger-the-left approach among the upper tiers of potential 2024 candidates.But her stumble on the trans bill planted some doubts among social conservatives, and her appearances on Fox News most weeks and her time spent at Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago fund-raising site have prompted griping in South Dakota.At home, Ms. Noem’s apparent White House ambitions bother Republicans who want her focused on the state’s needs, even as some in the party relish the attention her rising profile is bringing to the tourism-dependent state.She’s now on her fourth chief of staff in just over two years and has an increasingly awkward relationship with John Thune, South Dakota’s senior senator, and has favored the national party circuit over building relationships in the turn-of-the-century State Capitol in Pierre.“Let’s focus on the state of South Dakota right now,” Rhonda Milstead, a Republican state representative, said in an interview between floor sessions on the so-called veto day. “And if you’re going to run for governor in 2022, let’s focus on our state. I voted for her when she ran because I believe she cared about the state of South Dakota, so let’s do it.”Ms. Noem’s approach is markedly different from the arc of other modern governors-turned-presidents, such as Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Those politicians assiduously courted their states’ kingmakers, held up their legislative achievements as campaign calling cards and waited until they had been re-elected to the governor’s office before auditioning on the national stage.The question is whether that was then.As she steps up her already-busy travel schedule — she was the keynote speaker at the Kansas G.O.P.’s convention this month and will address Arkansas Republicans in June — Ms. Noem, 49, may represent the purest test of the potency of Trump-style pugilism.“It’s a contest about who can trigger the media and Democrats the most, and Noem is trying to get in that conversation,” said David Kochel, a Republican strategist and a veteran of presidential politics. “It’s, ‘Can I come up with something that’s going to inflame Rachel Maddow and raise awareness among conservatives because Fox will cover how much the left hates me?’”In the post-Trump party, a willingness to confront the news media and do battle with the left, preferably in viral-video snippets, is more compelling to activists than amassing a record of achievement or painstakingly building coalitions. Appearing at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February, Ms. Noem received her loudest applause for saying that Dr. Anthony S. Fauci “is wrong a lot.”Former President Donald J. Trump speaking at a fund-raiser for Kristi Noem during her 2018 campaign for the governor’s office.Susan Walsh/Associated PressMoreover, with Republicans having lost the presidency and both chambers of Congress after struggling among female voters, many in the party want to elevate a woman to their ticket in 2024, when Vice President Kamala Harris is likely to be the Democratic nominee for president or vice president.“She is one of the strongest examples of a great Republican woman,” said Glynis Gilio, a law student, who waited with a few dozen other CPAC attendees for Ms. Noem’s autograph. “We really need that strong female conservatism to pack a punch.”Russell Olson, a former South Dakota lawmaker who was elected to the Legislature alongside Ms. Noem in 2006, said Ms. Noem is “a conservative woman and can talk without regurgitating talking points, so she rises to easy consideration in my book.”Mr. Olson, whom Ms. Noem reappointed to the State Game, Fish and Parks Commission, is not the only South Dakota Republican eager to remain on the governor’s good side. A number of party officials and donors did not want to speak on the record about Ms. Noem’s political prospects, many of them pointedly observing that it is a small state.The governor declined an interview and, in keeping with her public posture, had a spokesman email to archly ask if the story would be “about next year’s re-election campaign?”Other South Dakota Republicans are downright gleeful about the speculation — though not necessarily because they’re eager to see her become president. “Love her or hate her, she’s the best resource South Dakota has going for it right now,” said Lee Schoenbeck, the leader of the State Senate. “She’s got such a platform.”Despite the state’s high Covid death toll per capita, and the outbreak stemming from the Sturgis motorcycle rally that drew nearly 500,000 biker enthusiasts last fall, many Republicans in South Dakota believe that the governor’s opposition to shutdowns contributed to South Dakota’s lowest-in-the-country unemployment rate, kept tourists coming and made the state newly appealing to transplants.Whether Ms. Noem ultimately lands on the 2024 ticket or not, she has made a name for herself nationally by recreating South Dakota as a sort of red-state oasis for visitors, new residents and businesses.She won the governorship by just three and a half percentage points, a slim margin in a state that has not elected a Democratic governor since 1974. Her approval rating stood at just 39 percent at the end of 2019, according to a private Republican poll shared by a party official familiar with the results. By last June, three months into the virus outbreak, the same pollster found that 62 percent of the state’s voters approved of her performance.Ms. Noem had a relatively modest profile during four terms serving in Congress and in her first year as governor. By the end of 2020, however, she had gained the notice of Mr. Trump, who was egging her on to challenge Mr. Thune in his primary next year.She has disclaimed any interest in such a challenge. But her coziness with Mr. Trump and her hiring of the hard-charging Corey Lewandowski, the former president’s onetime campaign manager, has put a chill in her relationship with Mr. Thune, the second-ranking Senate Republican. Mr. Thune has been clear that he wants the G.O.P. to ease away from being a cult of personality and focus on ideas.John Thune of South Dakota, the Senate minority whip, has said he wants the Republican Party to focus on ideas rather than personalities.Amr Alfiky/The New York Times“Thune wants to move on and can’t with a Trump clone in own backyard,” said Drey Samuelson, the longtime top aide to former Senator Tim Johnson of South Dakota.Ms. Noem plainly sees her opening as a Trump-of-the-prairie provocateur.In addition to her ubiquity on Fox News — one segment featured her escorting a network contributor on the state’s annual buffalo roundup — she has taken to Twitter with gusto. And not just to troll rappers.“This is how we do social distancing in South Dakota,” she wrote above a video of her shooting and downing a nearby pheasant, a clip that has drawn nearly seven million views.She also starred in a tourism commercial that aired nationally last year during the Covid surge. “We’re open for opportunity — and always will be,” Ms. Noem said as images of Mount Rushmore and galloping bison flashed on the screen.It’s difficult to overstate the importance of marketing to South Dakota.At the confluence of Midwest and West, and bifurcated by the Missouri River, the state has relied on tourism since the early part of the 20th century, when another ambitious governor, Peter Norbeck, relentlessly promoted the development of a granite monument in the Black Hills that could lure visitors to the region.Ms. Noem has shown a similar passion for making the state a destination, most memorably mixing tourism with politics by ensuring that fireworks could be displayed at Mount Rushmore to entice Mr. Trump there last year. South Dakota similarly trumpets its pheasant hunting, walleye fishing, and even more flagrant tourist pit stops, like Wall Drug and the Mitchell Corn Palace.“We don’t have a lot of industry in South Dakota, and we don’t have a lot of natural resources pumped out of the ground or mined, so when you have a state that’s basically ag and ranching, you need those out-of-state dollars,” said Ted Hustead, whose family owns Wall Drug, whose Western-themed collection of stores and restaurants is a major tourist attraction.That need is what put Ms. Noem in a vise over the transgender legislation.She initially said she would support the bill. But she reversed course after facing a backlash from South Dakota’s influential business community, which worried that the National Collegiate Athletic Association would pull moneymaking basketball tournaments out of the state.Ms. Noem was pressed about her change of mind by Tucker Carlson in a rare adversarial Fox News interview, and the flap fueled suspicions among social conservatives.“She says whatever she thinks she needs to say,” said Taffy Howard, a state lawmaker who has pressed Ms. Noem to disclose the details of state money she has been using for security on her frequent trips. “This was all about keeping her donors happy.”The House overrode Ms. Noem’s partial veto of the trans bill, but the State Senate declined to take action, dooming the legislation.Running for re-election with Mr. Trump’s support in a conservative state, Ms. Noem should be well-positioned next year. South Dakota, however, does have a history of spurning its politicians when their focus becomes more national than local.“Tom Daschles and George McGoverns are examples of what happens when you don’t pay attention at home — you got to make sure you’re balancing that well,” said Marty Jackley, a former state attorney general who lost to Ms. Noem in the primary election for governor, alluding to two of South Dakota’s most famous figures.Mr. Olson, Ms. Noem’s former colleague in the Legislature, said he nevertheless expected Ms. Noem to be a formidable candidate should she run for president. He learned his lesson, he said, after supporting her primary opponents when she ran for South Dakota’s lone House seat in 2010 and then for governor in 2018, and he was “not going to get the third strike.” More

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      Shades of 2016: Republicans Stay Silent on Trump, Hoping He Fades Away

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      Just like when Donald J. Trump was a candidate in 2016, rival Republicans are trying to avoid becoming the target of his attacks or directly confronting him, while hoping someone else will.It was a familiar scene on Sunday when Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota, tried to avoid giving a direct answer about the caustic behavior of former President Donald J. Trump.Mr. Trump had called Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, “dumb” and used a coarse phrase to underscore it while speaking to hundreds of Republican National Committee donors on Saturday night. When Mr. Thune was asked by Chris Wallace, the host of “Fox News Sunday,” to comment, he chuckled and tried to sidestep the question.“I think a lot of that rhetoric is — you know, it’s part of the style and tone that comes with the former president,” Mr. Thune said, before moving on to say Mr. Trump and Mr. McConnell shared the goal of reclaiming congressional majorities in 2022.Mr. Thune was not the only Republican straining to stay on the right side of the former president. The day before Mr. Trump delivered his broadsides against Mr. McConnell, Senator Rick Scott of Florida, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, presented Mr. Trump with a newly created award for his leadership.And Nikki Haley, the former ambassador to the United Nations under Mr. Trump who enraged him when she criticized his actions in connection to the Jan. 6 riot, and indicated the party needs to move on, has also been trying a delicate dance to work back into a more neutral territory.This week, she told The Associated Press that she would not run if Mr. Trump did, a display of deference that underscored the complications the former president represents to Republicans.Like many Republicans, Mr. Thune, Mr. Scott and Ms. Haley were navigating the impulses of a former president who talks privately about running again in 2024, and who is trying to bend the rest of the party to his will, even after the deadly riot by his supporters at the Capitol on Jan. 6. He retains a firm hold on a devoted group of Republican voters, and party leaders have discussed the need to continue appealing to the new voters Mr. Trump attracted over the past five years.To some extent, their posture recalls the waning days of Mr. Trump’s first primary candidacy, in 2015 and 2016. While Mr. McConnell and a few other Republicans have been directly critical of Mr. Trump’s conduct following the Capitol riot, most are trying to avoid alienating the former president, knowing he will set his sights on them for withering attacks, and hoping that someone or something else intervenes to hobble him.Even as Mr. Trump makes clear he will not leave the public stage, many Republicans have privately said they hope he will fade away, after a tenure in which the party lost both houses of Congress and the White House.Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican minority leader, was critical of Mr. Trump after the Capitol riot in January.Amr Alfiky/The New York Times“It is Groundhog Day,” said Tim Miller, a former adviser to Jeb Bush, the only candidate to repeatedly challenge Mr. Trump during the early stages of the Republican presidential primaries in 2016.“I always thought that was like a rational choice in 2015,” Mr. Miller said, referring to the instinct to lay back and let someone else take on Mr. Trump. “But after we all saw how the strategy fails of just hoping and wishing for him to go away, nobody learned from it.”Throughout that campaign, one candidate after another in the crowded field tried to position themselves to be the last man standing on the assumption that Mr. Trump would self-destruct before making it to the finish line.It was wishful thinking. Mr. Trump attacked not only Mr. Bush but several other candidates in deeply personal terms, including Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and the businesswoman Carly Fiorina. Only Mr. Bush sustained a response, though he eventually left the race after failing to gain traction; Mr. Cruz, in particular, told donors during a private meeting in late 2015 that he was going to give Mr. Trump a “big bear hug” in order to hold onto his voters.They all tried to avoid being the target of his insults, while hoping that external events and news media coverage would ultimately lead to his downfall. Instead, Mr. Trump solidified his position as primary voting began.“He intimidates people because he will attack viciously and relentlessly, much more than any other politician, yet somehow people crave his approval,” said Mike DuHaime, who advised former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey in that primary race. Mr. DuHaime recalled Mr. Trump attacking Mr. Bush’s wife in one debate, only for Mr. Bush to reciprocate when Mr. Trump offered a hand-slap later in that same debate.“Trump did self-destruct eventually, after four years in office,” Mr. DuHaime said. “But he can still make or break others, and that makes him powerful and relevant.”Even John Boehner, the former speaker of the House whose criticisms of Mr. Trump in his memoir, “On the House,” have garnered national headlines, told Time magazine this week that he voted for Mr. Trump in 2020 — well after the former president had spent months falsely suggesting the election would be corrupt.Nikki Haley, the former United Nations ambassador, has said she will not run for president in 2024 if Mr. Trump does.Meg Kinnard/Associated PressIn his speech before R.N.C. donors on Saturday night, Mr. Trump, in addition to attacking Mr. McConnell, also criticized a host of perceived enemies from both parties; among them was former Vice President Mike Pence, whose life was in danger on Jan. 6 because he was in the Capitol to certify the electoral votes. Mr. Trump reiterated that Mr. Pence, who recently signed a book deal, should have had “the courage” to send the electoral vote tallies back to the states, despite the fact that the vice president had made clear that he did not think he had the authority to do so.Jason Miller, an adviser to Mr. Trump, disagreed with the comparison to 2015, saying that Mr. Trump had more dominance over the base of the Republican Party now than he did then, according to public polling, and a greater number of senior Republican officials speaking out against him five years ago.“In 2021, there are no candidates trying to take out President Trump, just some occasional sniping from menthol-infused nitwits like John Boehner,” he said.Still, Mr. Trump does not have the complete control over the party that he did during four years in office. His critics include leading Republicans like Mr. McConnell and Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the No. 3-ranking Republican in the House. Asked on Fox News on Tuesday if she would vote for Mr. Trump if he ran in 2024 Ms. Cheney replied “I would not.’Ms. Cheney, whom Mr. Trump has threatened as a target of his anger, also said her fellow Republicans shouldn’t “embrace insurrection.”And not all Republicans think that ignoring Mr. Trump is a mistake. One senior party member, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he didn’t want to engage in a lengthy back and forth with Mr. Trump, said that with the former president out of office and off Twitter, his reach is limited.The Republican said there had been anecdotal evidence from members of Congress during the recess that Mr. Trump was less omnipresent for voters in their districts than he had previously been.While Mr. Trump was ascendant in 2015 and 2016, said an adviser to another Republican who may run in 2024, that wasn’t the case now. And if party leaders fight with him publicly or try to take him on, it could only strengthen him, the Republican argued, giving him more prominence.What’s more, the first senior Republican argued, Republican lawmakers have found common cause not just in battling President Biden’s policies but in the backlash to the Georgia voting rights law. Those fights have continued without Mr. Trump, and will accelerate, the Republican said, without being driven by the cult of personality around the former president.Other Republicans are privately hopeful that the criminal investigation into Mr. Trump’s business by the New York district attorney, Cyrus Vance Jr., will result in charges that hobble him from running again or even being a major figure within the party. People who have spoken with Mr. Trump say that he is agitated about the investigation.While all of that may represent just a slow turn away from Mr. Trump, those Republicans believe the turn has begun.David Kochel, a Republican strategist and supporter of Mr. Bush during the 2016 campaign, sounded less optimistic.He noted that even the horror of Jan. 6 did not break the hold Mr. Trump has on other elected officials, and that several anchors on Fox News — the largest conservative news outlet — had consistently downplayed the attack on air, numbing viewers to what took place as time passes.In an interview on Fox News with the host Laura Ingraham late last month, when asked about the security around the Capitol, Mr. Trump said: “It was zero threat right from the start. It was zero threat.”He added: “Some of them went in and there they are hugging and kissing the police and the guards. You know, they had great relationships. A lot of the people were waved in and then they walked in and they walked out.”Mr. Kochel said Jan. 6 was “being stuffed down the memory hole” with the help of Fox News, noting that the strategy of waiting out Mr. Trump and hoping he fades away has had a less-than-perfect history of being effective.“We’ve seen this movie before — a bunch of G.O.P. leaders all looking at each other, waiting to see who’s going to try and down Trump,” he said. More

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      McConnell’s Strategy Has Party in Turmoil and Trump on Attack

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyMcConnell’s Strategy Has Party in Turmoil and Trump on AttackThe Republican leader’s calculus was simple: Don’t stoke a full-on revolt by Trump supporters by voting to convict the former president, but demonstrate to anti-Trump Republicans that he recognized Mr. Trump’s failings. It didn’t work.Allies of Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, acknowledged that former President Donald J. Trump still had a hold on the party’s base.Credit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesCarl Hulse and Feb. 17, 2021Updated 9:41 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — Senator Mitch McConnell’s colleagues may not have deep personal affection for their often distant and inscrutable leader, but there is considerable appreciation for how he has spared them from difficult votes while maintaining a laserlike focus on keeping the Senate majority.His approach on Saturday at the conclusion of former President Donald J. Trump’s impeachment trial seemed aimed at doing just that. After voting to acquit Mr. Trump of inciting the Jan. 6 riot that invaded the Senate chamber, Mr. McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, began a fiery tirade, declaring him “practically and morally responsible” for the assault. In essence, Mr. McConnell said he found Mr. Trump guilty but not subject to impeachment as a private citizen.The strategy appeared twofold: Don’t stoke a full-on revolt by Trump supporters the party needs by voting to convict, but demonstrate to anti-Trump Republicans — particularly big donors — that he recognized Mr. Trump’s failings and is beginning to steer the party in another direction.But it did not exactly produce the desired result. Instead, it has drawn Mr. McConnell into a vicious feud with the former president, who lashed out at him on Tuesday as a “dour, sullen and unsmiling political hack,” and given new cause for Republican division that could spill into the midterm elections. And it has left some Republicans bewildered over Mr. McConnell’s strategy and others taking a harder line, saying the leader whose focus was always the next election had hurt the party’s 2022 prospects.The miscalculation has left Mr. McConnell in an unusual place — on the defensive, with Mr. Trump pressing for his ouster, and no easy way to extricate himself from the political bind.“McConnell has many talents, there is no doubt about it, but if he is setting this thing up as a way to expunge Trump from the Republican Party, that is a failing proposition,” Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, said in an interview on Wednesday.Mr. Johnson, who is weighing running for re-election next year in a highly competitive battleground state, said support for Mr. McConnell was already emerging as a negative factor among Trump-backing Republican primary voters he speaks with back home. He said the minority leader risked becoming a full-blown pariah for Senate candidates if he did not move quickly toward unifying the party.Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, in an interview Tuesday night with Sean Hannity on Fox News, said the fact that Mr. Trump and Mr. McConnell were “now at each other’s throats” was imperiling the political outlook for Republicans.“I’m more worried about 2022 than I’ve ever been,” Mr. Graham said. “I don’t want to eat our own. President Trump is the most consequential Republican in the party. If Mitch McConnell doesn’t understand that, he’s missing a lot.”Mr. McConnell needs to be returned to his top role after the 2022 elections to become the longest-serving Senate leader in history in 2023, a goal the legacy-minded Kentuckian would no doubt like to achieve. And there is no imminent threat to his leadership position, though one senator said privately that a challenge could have been incited had Mr. McConnell split with the 42 other Republican senators who voted to acquit Mr. Trump.Mr. McConnell has been conspicuously silent since the attack by Mr. Trump. He made no effort to walk back his Saturday speech or a subsequent op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, but, characteristically, he now also appears uninterested in further inflaming the fight by punching back at Mr. Trump. David Popp, a spokesman for Mr. McConnell, declined to comment on Wednesday.His Republican allies quickly circled around him, speaking in the void of his silence.Senator Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia said that Mr. McConnell was on “very solid ground” and that she had come away from conversations with him convinced he was moving forward with eyes open, prepared for the “slings and arrows” that taking on a vindictive former president would attract.“He’s not exactly a stream-of-consciousness communicator. He is very circumspect, very disciplined in his speech, and I think the speech he gave on the floor regarding former President Trump came right from his heart,” Ms. Capito said in an interview. She added, “His classic technique is to put it out there, say what he thinks and keep moving forward.”Senator John Thune of South Dakota, his No. 2 whom Mr. Trump has already promised to target next year, said in a statement that Mr. McConnell had “my full support and confidence.”Senator John Cornyn of Texas said Mr. McConnell had expressed his horror at what had occurred. “I think it genuinely offended him what happened in the Capitol that night,” Mr. Cornyn said. “Obviously, he spoke his mind.”Mr. Trump spoke his mind as well. In his Tuesday broadside that attacked Mr. McConnell in sharply personal terms despite their close collaboration over the past four years, Mr. Trump urged his party to abandon the Kentucky Republican. He also threatened to initiate primaries against Republican Senate candidates he believed were not sufficiently supportive of his agenda.That is a possibility that worries Senate Republicans. Most are confident about gaining the one seat needed to take back the Senate in the coming 2022 midterm elections — unless their candidates engage in messy primary races that end up producing hard-right candidates who cannot win in the general election, an outcome that harmed Republicans in the past. Those memories have stuck with Mr. McConnell, who has promised to intervene in primaries if he believes a candidate is endangering the party’s chance of winning a general election.Mr. Johnson said Republicans cannot win without the ardent Trump supporters now alienated by Mr. McConnell’s denunciation of Mr. Trump. He lumped the Republican leader in with the Lincoln Project and other anti-Trump Republicans who tried to “purge” the party of Trumpism. “They are not perceiving reality,” he said.“You are not going to be able to have them on your side if you are ripping the person they have a great deal of sympathy for in what he has done for this country and the personal toll President Trump has shouldered,” he said.Mr. McConnell’s allies acknowledged that Mr. Trump still had a hold on the Republican base but one said that Republicans should still be able to come together in opposition to what they saw as a far-left progressive agenda pursued by President Biden and congressional Democrats.“The unfortunate consequences of Democrats’ power was on full display in the opening days of the Biden administration when it effectively fired thousands of union workers, when it canceled the Keystone XL pipeline and froze oil and gas leases on federal lands,” said Antonia Ferrier, a former communications director to Mr. McConnell.Despite the heat of the current moment, some Republicans say they expect Mr. McConnell to weather the current hostile environment as he has in the past, aided by the passage of time and developments that diminish Mr. Trump’s hold on the party. They say he has survived challenges from the right in the past and stamped out primary challenges that threatened his preferred candidate.“Two years from now,” Mr. Cornyn said, “things could look completely different.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More