NOW, REPUBLICANS ARE BLASTING TRUMP’S ‘LAW AND ORDER’ PITCH

President Donald Trump’s inability to unify the nation at a time of grave unrest is testing his uneasy alliance with mainstream Republicans, some emboldened by Gen. James Mattis’ plea for a leader who lives up to the US ideals of a more perfect union, reported Laurie Kellman and Lisa Mascaro for the Associated Press (AP) on June 5, 2020.

Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski on Thursday called the rebuke by Trump’s first Pentagon chief “necessary and overdue,” adding “perhaps we’re getting to the point where we can be more honest with the concerns that we might hold internally, and have the courage of our own convictions to speak up.” Asked whether she can still support Trump, Murkowski replied: “I am struggling with it. I have struggled with it for a long time.” Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., a frequent Trump critic who is up for reelection, said, “I’m against clearing out a peaceful protest for a photo op that treats the word of God as a political prop.”

Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, one of the most vulnerable Senate Republicans seeking reelection, said it was “painful to watch peaceful protesters to be subjected to tear gas in order for the president to go across the street to a church that I believe he’s attended only once.” For his part, Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., who is not on the ballot this year, said “The President’s important message was drowned out by an awkward photo op” and added: “President Trump’s walk to St. John’s was confrontational, at the wrong time of day, and it distracted from his important message in the Rose Garden about our national grief, racism, peaceful protests, and lawful assembly.”

Republican Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio also said after Mattis’s rebuke of Trump that “Trump’s tone and words kind of in between those more formal presentations have not unified people,” Portman said. “It’s more about tone. I think he’s probably getting that message from a lot of people.”