'Cowardice, Not Conviction': Republicans Try to Back Away From Toxic Trump After Years of Subservience

Republican politicians who have spent years kowtowing to President Donald Trump are suddenly scrambling to distance themselves from him, as his approval ratings hit record lows less than six weeks before the midterm elections.

Some critics, however, are questioning the seriousness of the Republicans' purported dissents.

A Thursday report from The New York Times highlighted instances of Republican Senate candidates in battleground states such as Iowa and Michigan calling for an end to Trump's illegal war with Iran, which has sent energy prices soaring over the last six months.

Apparent Republican queasiness over Trump policies in an election year isn't limited to the Iran War, as Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) on Wednesday issued a statement pushing back on tactics used by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in his home state.

"When ICE operates in Kansas, it needs to coordinate with our local law enforcement," Marshall wrote in a social media post. "Our sheriffs and police know these communities better than anyone, and working together keeps officers and residents safe."

Marshall's statement came one week after Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.) publicly broke with Trump on immigration policy, telling the president that his mass deportations were going "too far" and leaving Latino voters who backed him in 2024 feeling "betrayed."

Former Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-Fla.) told the Times that the abrupt breaks with Trump show that "this is survival mode time for Republicans," as they no longer have to fear that the unpopular president will back primary challengers against them this year.

Marc Short, former chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence, told the Times he was skeptical about Republicans succeeding in portraying themselves as independent-minded Trump critics given how they have dutifully supported him in lockstep for the last two years.

"If you’ve been carrying the president’s water on all his legislation priorities and his issues, it’s hard now to distance yourself," Short explained. "It appears now as if it’s just for political convenience."

Former CBS News anchor John Dickerson similarly questioned how sincere Republicans were being in their last-minute pushback against certain Trump policies.

Specifically, Dickerson pointed to Iowa GOP US Senate candidate Ashley Hinson, who called on Trump to bring his illegal war "to a successful and immediate end" to lower energy costs for American farmers.

"Hinson hasn't said starting the war was a mistake," Dickerson wrote in an analysis published Thursday on his Substack page. "She has repeatedly voted against House resolutions to limit Trump's war powers, most recently last week... Saying a war should come to a successful end hardly repudiates the president who started it."

Drop Site News reporter Ryan Grim echoed Dickerson's analysis in a Tuesday social media post.

"Ashley Hinson [is] out with a statement whining and crying about the consequences of the war she supported," Grim wrote. "If you read far enough in, you find she’s calling for an end to it. But just last week the House voted on a war powers resolution to end the war and she voted against it."

In an op-ed published Thursday, Bloomberg columnist Mary Ellen Klas offered a critical examination of Salazar's seeming revolt against Trump's hardline immigration policies, describing it as a signal "to fellow Republicans that they had permission to publicly distance themselves from their party leader to save themselves from electoral collapse."

"Republicans who didn’t have the courage to speak up as Trump corrupted the executive branch and usurped congressional authority," Klas added, "have suddenly grown backbones."

In a separate social media post promoting her column, Klas accused Republicans of showing "cowardice, not conviction" in their last-minute shifts.