Category: Politics

President Donald Trump is going the extra mile for Sen. Darline Graham in deep-red South Carolina.

That’s left battleground Republicans wondering when it’ll be their turn, even while they acknowledge Trump’s campaign trip is in part owing to his strong ties with the candidate’s late brother, former Sen. Lindsey Graham. It’s also caused several supporters of Graham’s primary opponent to scratch their heads at the sudden attention he’s giving a state that is far from critical for ensuring GOP control in Washington. Trump is bringing back his hallmark campaign rally for Graham on Friday in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, just days ahead of her runoff against Republican Rep. Ralph Norman.

It’s a far cry from the quieter strategy the president has used for candidates in battleground races in Georgia, Michigan and Texas: a couple supportive social media posts and, in some cases, a telerally on the eve of Election Day.

“It’s going to be a red seat,” said Randy Page, a longtime Republican operative in South Carolina who is supporting Norman in the race. “If I were the president, if I were giving him political advice, I’d say: ‘We’re right next to Georgia, we’re right next to North Carolina. Texas ain’t that far away.’ There are some real places that are going to affect the party keeping control of either the House or the Senate, and it’s like he’s just flying over them and ignoring them.”

Strategists involved with GOP candidates who could use Trump’s base-boosting help elsewhere are eagerly waiting to see whether he’ll put the same effort into their own races later this year.

“He’s coming in person for Darline Graham. He really hasn’t done much else,” said one GOP operative involved in several battleground races, including in Georgia, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “He probably has the ability to move the needle in Republicans’ favor better than anyone else in the country. The question is just: Will he? Is he willing to? Does he want to? Does he care enough?”

Trump’s appearance in Myrtle Beach is a significant and explicit foray back to the campaign trail in a year in which his previous appearances with his endorsed candidates were mainly on official White House business, focused on issues like affordability and domestic energy production. It also comes at a crucial moment for Graham, who is looking for a momentum boost after an embarrassing debate stage fumble on foreign policy.

He appeared with Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo in Las Vegas for an official event earlier this month billed to tout tax cuts in a state where the governor is facing a tough reelection battle. In late July, he traveled to suburban Atlanta to deliver remarks where he touted GOP Rep. Mike Collins’ Senate bid against Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff (Collins himself was absent because of votes in Washington). And a month earlier, he took part in a roundtable discussion with frontline GOP Rep. Derrick Van Orden in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin.

But it’s been far less than in years past. Trump was ever-present on the campaign trail during the 2018 midterms, and blitzed across the country for rallies during his 2024 election bid, but his travel has been somewhat curtailed since he has faced two attempts on his life that same year.

The Friday rally is the kind of support that some Republican candidates wished had come for them in their own contentious primaries — and operatives in states with competitive general election matchups hope it signals more presidential help is on the horizon before November.

Trump’s heavy hand and his grip over the Republican Party has continued to shape the outcome of several primaries this year, but the degree to which he will help ensure control of Congress this fall — both through campaign appearances and spending his $400 million MAGA Inc. war chest — remains an open question.

For some Republicans in battleground states watching from afar, Trump’s Friday appearance with Graham is a reminder of how little time the president spent on the campaign trail during the primary season.

“Him posting on True Social and doing a tele-town hall has kind of, from what I can tell, been kind of the limit of what he’s done for most endorsed candidates. So this is a little different that he’s going down there,” said Matt Mackowiak, a Republican strategist based in Texas who worked with Sen. John Cornyn on his unsuccessful reelection primary earlier this year and said he will support the Republican ticket this fall.

The White House dismissed concerns over Trump’s attention on South Carolina over other states in a statement.

“President Trump is the unequivocal leader of the Republican party who is committed to maintaining Republicans’ majority in Congress,” said White House spokesperson Olivia Wales. “President Trump will continue to draw a sharp contrast with his commonsense agenda and the radical Democrats in Congress who allowed millions of illegal aliens to flow through the border, unanimously opposed the Working Families Tax Cuts, and are soft-on-crime.”

Several Republicans said that Trump’s Friday rally is likely borne from his long and mostly close relationship with Sen. Lindsey Graham, who Graham’s sister Darline and Norman are running to replace.

“It’s partly that this one is unique,” Mackowiak said. “It’s partly about Lindsey and about I think he’s doing what he thinks Lindsey would have wanted him to do, and so he wants to see that through and see that succeed.”

Regardless of the impetus behind the decision to travel to the Palmetto State, the president’s in-person appearance is a major boon for Graham’s campaign, and her team is eager to capitalize on the rare in-person campaign moment as the recently appointed senator has weathered criticism over her political inexperience. Trump “knows Senator Darline is a true MAGA ally who will help him implement his agenda and fight against the Woke mob better than any other Senate candidate in the country,” Graham spokesperson Abby Zilch said in a statement.

Graham made a significant gaffe on the debate stage earlier this week, when she said “I’m not that informed on national security” in response to a question on U.S. interests in Taiwan. Norman’s allies were quick to seize on the moment to drive home their message that she’s “underprepared” for the office.

A person with direct knowledge of Graham’s campaign’s strategy acknowledged the misstep, but insisted that she had sufficiently cleaned up the flub during a Fox News appearance with Sean Hannity. Now, their focus is on the president’s visit: “This rally allows the campaign to own statewide earned media for a couple days,” said the person, who was granted anonymity to discuss private conversations. “The Trump endorsement is big, but him coming in state is bigger. President Trump is all in.”

If Graham falls short on Tuesday, it will be one of Trump’s most embarrassing in a recent string of losses this primary season. He pushed for her appointment to the Senate to complete her late brother’s term and openly encouraged her to run for a full six years, with his backing.

Plus, he’s already stumbled in South Carolina before: His first pick in this year’s governor’s race, Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette, lost momentum to Attorney General Alan Wilson in the primary, leading to a rare double endorsement from Trump at the last minute.

Several Norman supporters think that Trump should put his focus elsewhere — even if they agree with the president on virtually every other issue.

“Michigan and Ohio and Alaska, Maine and Texas are all at risk of losing to the Democrats,” said state Rep. Jordan Pace, who has endorsed Norman’s bid. “That’s where the money and the attention should be, shoring up those states.”

​Politics

Privately, many Republicans wanted GOP Rep. Cory Mills to lose his primary in Florida. Like with so many scandal-plagued candidates this year, they worried he would turn a safe seat into a battleground.

But rather than push him out of the race, they let voters decide his fate. With weak fundraising and polling amid allegations of sexual misconduct and domestic violence, party officials believed he was going to lose anyway, saving them from having to intervene.

“There wasn’t much of a push to yank him out,” said one national Republican operative working on House races, who like others in this article was granted anonymity to speak candidly.

On Tuesday, Florida voters rejected Mills’ reelection bid, avoiding what would have been another headache. This election cycle, both parties keep playing whack-a-mole as candidate after candidate becomes embroiled in controversy ranging from ethics scandals to sexual misconduct, including in key races that could determine who controls Congress. Neither party has settled on a clear playbook for when to step in or what counts as disqualifying — though they have drawn those lines differently.

Top Republicans are now quietly getting behind Ohio Rep. Max Miller, who is mired in allegations of domestic abuse involving his ex-wife and child, and defied calls to drop out. They declined to push out then-Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas), whose staffer died by suicide after he had an affair with her. Facing an expulsion vote, he did not resign until hours after embattled Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) did, effectively evening out the margins. And GOP leadership eventually got behind scandal-ridden Ken Paxton, but after President Donald Trump and Texas voters embraced him in the Senate primary.

Many Democrats also grappled with what to do about Graham Platner throughout a series of escalating scandals until POLITICO’s report of a sexual assault allegation forced him out of the Maine Senate race. Their months of indecision, some worry, will continue to haunt them through the midterms.

“We don’t trust our instincts anymore,” one longtime Democratic strategist said.

“The laws of political gravity have just been so upended” since Trump won in 2016 over a series of scandals, the strategist said, adding: “We’re reluctant to apply the old rules because … are we handicapping ourselves or potentially punishing ourselves by adhering to the old standards that haven’t been serving us, or certainly didn’t stop the other side from winning the presidency twice?”

In Mills’ case, his loss brought Republicans private relief even as it meant a Trump-endorsed incumbent was ousted. The representative is facing an investigation by the House Ethics Committee and remains under a restraining order imposed last fall after a former girlfriend accused him of threatening to release sexually explicit videos of her. He has denied wrongdoing.

Trump, in the aftermath of the primary, wrote on social media that he asked Mills “to get out of the Race, but he wouldn’t listen” and immediately backed the winner, Ryan Elijah.

Voters have increasingly displayed a willingness to tolerate controversy — especially when political power is on the line. A recent POLITICO Poll shows voters are willing to accept their preferred candidates having DUI convictions, being accused of using tax loopholes, concealing a terminal illness or exaggerating their military service, though Democrats were less tolerant than Republicans of sexual assault and domestic violence allegations.

“[When] the gavel is on the line, people in both political parties have the … highest tolerance for political weakness of their party,” said an Ohio-based GOP operative. “This is the year like no other where voters and political leaders and political parties are willing to look past blemishes and weaknesses of their own candidate.”

The GOP and Democratic Party have shown different responses to the most serious of allegations. Republicans like Speaker Mike Johnson have often called for processes to play out and to let voters decide their future. And even as White House officials or Trump himself placed a call to get a scandal-plagued Republican like Mills or Miller to drop, they rarely followed through on pulling their support.

Democrats have shown they’re more willing to draw a line, particularly around sexual assault allegations. But their biggest example — Platner — is a complicated one: Many in the party tolerated months of controversy, from a Nazi tattoo to reports of volatile prior relationships, before ultimately calling for him to suspend his campaign.

“They either didn’t care about the scandal, were willing to turn a blind eye to it,” said a second Democratic operative working on Senate races. Democrats were so focused on beating Susan Collins they were willing to accept multiple scandals, they said, but “I am glad to see that credible allegations of a sexual assault were actually a red line for people.”

Democrats did quickly turn on Swalwell, who suspended his bid for California governor days after sexual assault and misconduct allegations pushed his campaign into a tailspin. But Democratic leadership has not yet called on Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Calif.) to resign amid allegations of sexual misconduct, instead pushing for a “thorough and swift” Ethics Committee investigation.

Gomez has admitted to extramarital affairs but said they were “consensual in nature,” a claim disputed Wednesday by lawyers of the woman interviewed by the ethics panel.

On the GOP side, Johnson and House Republican leaders took weeks to pull their support for Gonzales. It wasn’t until a day after POLITICO reported that independent House investigators found a “substantial reason to believe” Gonzales had sex with his subordinate, a violation of House Rules, that they abandoned him.

But the GOP let the voters decide in Arizona, where Trump-endorsed Mark Lamb, the former Pinal County sheriff, recently won his congressional primary despite allegations of sexual misconduct and abuse of power.

And Republicans have quietly accepted Miller in Ohio. Once the Trump administration saw Miller was unlikely to abandon his reelection bid, they asked Ohio Republicans to refrain from waging a public pressure campaign to avoid a messy situation where they then have to defend a candidate they once tried to oust.

Democrats say that’s a clear example that they are more willing to draw a line than Republicans.

“Graham Platner is not a candidate, and Max Miller is. That should tell you everything you need to know about the differences between the two parties,” said Democratic ad maker Ian Russell.

“There are complicated situations that have definitely not been handled in retrospect by both parties as well as they could have been, but there is nothing the same in how Democratic leadership has responded to issues in our ranks versus our Republican leadership has responded to issues in their ranks,” Russell said.

Still, the calculus for scandal, a second national GOP strategist and a longtime senior House staffer argued, most often comes down to Congress’ razor-thin margins.

“It’s about numbers,” they said. “It’s not about the gravity of a scandal.”

Chris Marquette and Riley Rogerson contributed to this report. 

​Politics

How Jonathan Haidt turned the fight over kids and social media into a political movement

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​Politics

Republican Mike Rogers expressed support Thursday for a “pause” on data center construction as he runs against a progressive Democrat for Michigan’s open Senate seat.

Michigan is one of the top Senate battlegrounds this cycle, with Democrats hoping to hold on to the seat being vacated by retiring Sen. Gary Peters.

Asked during a news conference about his “policy on data centers,” Rogers said, “I think we need to take a pause, probably, and make sure that we’re answering all the questions that people have.”

Rogers specified to the Detroit News that he supports a one-year moratorium on data centers in Michigan — a proposal state policymakers would approve — not a national ban.

“While I don’t support a federal ban, Michigan needs stronger guardrails to protect community control, prevent utility price hikes, protect our water and stop pay-to-play schemes,” Rogers told the News.

“That is why I am calling for a one-year moratorium on new data centers until we establish a fair, transparent approval process that puts local communities first.”

The position is a massive shift for the former congressman and separates him from most of the Republican Party and even many Democrats. Rogers’ campaign did not immediately respond to POLITICO’s requests for comment or clarification.

Rogers’ opponent, Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, has called for strict new standards to prevent data center impacts on the electric grid, water and local communities, but has not called for a large-scale moratorium, as other progressives have.

Data centers have become a pivotal issue in numerous midterm campaign as voters grow increasingly weary of the facilities and blame them for electricity costs and other impacts. The Data Center Coalition has said the facilities alone are not to blame for higher utility rates.

Data centers are also defining another major Senate campaign this year — the Ohio contest between Republican Sen. Jon Husted and former Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, who has accused Husted of being too tight with data centers.

This week, the National Republican Senatorial Committee sent a memo to the technology sector warning that data centers are proving toxic in the midterms, especially in the fight between Husted and Brown.

On Capitol Hill, House lawmakers are moving forward with legislation called the Ratepayer Protection Act, H.R. 9340, to shield Americans from the impact of data centers. Husted is sponsoring the Senate companion, S. 5028.

In the past, Rogers has been generally supportive of the data center build-out. In a July interview with ABC affiliate WXYZ, he said there should be electric grid and environmental rules for data centers, but communities that want them should be able to allow their construction.

“If the people are willing to put up with one of these things in their community, they ought to have direct benefit,” he said. “I think that’s a better way to get the community involved in the decision.”

El-Sayed, who focused a large portion of his primary campaign against Rep. Haley Stevens, seemed skeptical of Rogers’ change. He responded to the news on X with an emoji with its eyebrow raised.

“People really effing hate data centers,” the Democrat said in one campaign event.

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) called for a state data center moratorium during her race for governor. She lost the primary.

​Politics

Michael Cohen and President Donald Trump have apparently patched up their differences in private. Now, they can do it in public.

The president is scheduled to do a phone interview Thursday with Cohen on the New York City radio show that Trump’s former lawyer and “fixer” began hosting last month.

Cohen said in an interview ahead of the broadcast that he and his former boss have met privately three times and reconciled since a bitter and very public falling out during the president’s first term.

“I suggest you listen to the show. You may find it extremely interesting,” he told POLITICO.

Cohen, who made a stunning conversion from pro-Trump bulldog to fierce critic, said he wasn’t sure if during the interview he and the president would discuss presidential clemency for the conviction that landed him a three-year prison sentence.

He isn’t sure he will even push for clemency from the president.

“We’ll see,” he said. “Will I make that request down the road? I don’t know. Maybe maybe not.”

That the president’s erstwhile attorney is even considering asking Trump for a pardon is somewhat remarkable.

Cohen was the star witness in New York prosecutors’ 2024 hush money case against Trump, which saw the then-candidate become the first ever former president to become a convicted felon when he was found guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records to keep word of an affair with former porn star Stormy Daniels from public view.

Cohen, who testified that he lied and bullied for Trump during his years working for the Trump Organization, later turned on his former boss. He told POLITICO in an April 2024 interview, for example, that the Jan. 6 Capitol riot was “grotesque” and predicted “there will never be another election again in America” if he was reelected.

Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison in 2018 on charges related to hush money payments to help conceal his boss’ affair with a porn star.

He said he sent pardon applications to former President Joe Biden’s administration and the Trump White House but doesn’t consider clemency, which would enable him to recover his law license, critical to his life at this point.

“I’m turning 60 next week. What am I going to go start practicing law again?” he said. “What has the loss of my law license prevented me from actually doing? Though I do believe I’m deserving of it, that’s a whole nother story.”

Thursday’s interview will mark the culmination of a months-long effort by Cohen to get back in the president’s good graces. He told a New York radio station this summer that they had a text exchange that started their reconciliation.

Teasing the interview, Cohen said people will be “interested to hear two individuals that were friends for a decade and a half who have not publicly spoken in eight years” talk about their long shared past. “What could they talk about?” he said.

​Politics

The hard-right Freedom Caucus is having a rough primary season.

Candidates with backing from the caucus and its allies flopped in primaries from Florida to Wyoming on Tuesday, adding to a string of recent losses for the group.

In Florida, Catalina Lauf lost in a House GOP primary to replace Freedom Caucus member and Florida Rep. Byron Donalds — despite backing from President Donald Trump as well as a late, small ad buy from the Freedom Caucus Fund and millions from other groups supporting her.

Hours later, more than a dozen Wyoming Freedom Caucus candidates in the state’s legislature lost to moderates. The group’s chair, Rachel Rodriguez-Williams, lost to a moderate in the secretary of state race, as did Freedom Caucus candidates for state superintendent and treasurer.

Those losses followed Rep. Andy Ogles’ (R-Tenn.) ouster earlier this month, Rep. Chip Roy’s (R-Texas) defeat in his run for Attorney General and Rep. Ralph Norman’s third-place primary finish in the race for South Carolina governor — all candidates who the Freedom Caucus Fund, the federal campaign apparatus of the House Freedom Caucus, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to boost.

The State Freedom Caucus Network, which backed the Wyoming legislative candidates, is not officially affiliated with the House Freedom Caucus, but its website says its mission is “building on the success of the House Freedom Caucus” to bring the fiscally conservative principles of the group to statehouses nationwide.

While there have been some wins for Freedom Caucus members this cycle, the combined pattern suggests that the ultra-conservative group’s name and influence is waning with GOP voters, and it comes as the factions of the party battle for relevancy when Trump’s presidency ends.

“They became largely an island of misfit toys: problematic in their party, and not for reasons that are necessarily popular with the public,” said GOP strategist Matthew Bartlett, who served in Trump’s first administration. “So you’ve seen diminished influence, and you’ve seen them losing seats, losing stature.”

In Wyoming, Robert Short, a moderate Republican, defeated Rodriguez-Williams by campaigning on a slogan of “make the secretary of state’s office boring again.”

“What Wyomingites were not and still are not is extremists,” Short told POLITICO, arguing that by pushing an “extremist agenda” in the state, the local Freedom Caucus tried to “usher in a national-driven agenda that really does not have a home in Wyoming.
And I think the voters of Wyoming responded resoundingly last night in saying, ‘not up in here.’”

The Wyoming losses were especially notable given how conservative that state is. Just two years ago, Freedom Caucus-aligned members took control of the state legislature and the state and gave Trump the highest vote share of any state in the nation. Two years before that, the state’s GOP primary voters resoundingly ousted former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), who defied Trump over his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen. It’s still one of only a handful of states where Trump’s approval rating is still positive. So for the Freedom Caucus to get thumped there is particularly notable.

Wyoming’s Freedom Caucus members struggled to pass its priorities and tried to axe broadly popular programs, from public media funding to dismantling the state’s economic development agency. In proposing those changes, the caucus often sparred with more traditional conservatives.

The caucus aimed to secure a supermajority through Tuesday’s primaries to ram its agenda through the legislature. Instead, voters resoundingly rejected them.

“It was a butt-whoopin,” said Wyoming GOP state Rep. Andrew Byron, who ran unopposed on Tuesday and is not a member of the Freedom Caucus. “It was a huge statement by the Wyoming voters that shows that if you’re not willing to govern and listen to your constituents, they react.”

Multiple Republicans in the state, including Byron, pointed to big spending from national outside groups backing the Freedom Caucus that made Wyomingites feel like out-of-staters were trying to influence their politics as reason for the sweeping losses.

“Wyoming people live in Wyoming because we like our way of life,” Byron said. “We’re not good at getting told what to do, and we really appreciate the Wild West out here.”

In a statement posted to social media, the Wyoming Freedom Caucus said it “IS NOT GOING ANYWHERE.”

“Last night’s results will not undo the policy wins we’ve delivered on behalf of the people,” the group wrote.

Their struggles are part of a broader pattern. The Freedom Caucus Fund has failed to elevate its candidates in four of the five races it spent in this year, spending a combined $1.5 million dollars to boost Lauf (who got just $30,000 in support from the group), Ogles, Norman, Roy and Nevada Republican David Flippo (who is the only candidate the group spent for and won).

After publication, a Freedom Caucus Fund spokesperson pointed POLITICO to its 29-2 win-loss record in congressional primary endorsements this cycle. Most of those were for incumbents in uncontested races where the group did not spend.

These candidates didn’t all lose for the same reasons. Ogles had been plagued by various scandals, was running in a newly redrawn district with a number of new voters unfamiliar to him, and had limited campaign resources. Roy was hammered for his past support of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and criticism of Trump in the 2024 presidential primary. Norman was running in a crowded field in which Trump was backing another candidate (and he is again in the South Carolina special Senate primary). For her part, Lauf struggled to break out in a crowded 10-way primary in a ruby red seat.

But observers say there’s often a common through-line: The candidates have been mired in controversy.

“In a day and age where candidates matter, they tend to create their own headaches,” Bartlett said. “Sometimes behavioral, sometimes ideological.”

Neither the Freedom Caucus Fund nor a spokesperson for Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris (R-Md.) responded to a request for comment on Wednesday before publication. Multiple Wyoming Freedom Caucus members who lost on Tuesday also did not return calls.

The only victory for the group where it spent money this cycle was in Nevada’s 2nd District, where it elevated Flippo in the race to replace retiring Rep. Mark Amodei (R-Nevada), who has declined to support Flippo in the general election for the deep-red seat. In other races where the campaign arm didn’t spend, Donalds and Reps. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) and Tom Tiffany (R-Wis.) cruised to their states’ GOP nominations for governor, and Rep. Barry Moore (R-Ala.) won the primary to succeed Sen. Tommy Tuberville in the upper chamber.

Some of those candidates, like Biggs and Tiffany, will face tough general election bids in battleground states — providing another test for the Freedom Caucus among a broader swath of voters.

​Politics

South Carolina Sen. Darline Graham has given opponents fresh ammunition to attack her on her biggest vulnerability: her inexperience.

She revealed a major blindspot in her understanding of a critical foreign policy issue, U.S.-Taiwan relations, during Tuesday’s debate for the Aug. 25 snap Senate primary runoff to replace her late brother Lindsey Graham. Her response spread like wildfire on social media, with critics saying it proves she is “unprepared” to take office.

Asked whether Taiwan and the South China Sea are relevant national security priorities, Graham responded: “I’m just going to be honest here … I’m not that informed on national security, so.” She added that “national security is not my thing, not my area of expertise, but I do support the military.”

It was a notable acknowledgement from a sitting senator, as tensions rise between China and Taiwan — and as the U.S. preoccupation with the Iran war calls into question how reliable a supporter it might be amid fears of a possible future invasion of Taiwan.

The gaffe exposed the exact weakness that her runoff opponent, GOP Rep. Ralph Norman, has been eager to highlight: the senator’s lack of tenure.

His allies immediately piled on.

Norman supporter and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley wrote in a post on X that foreign policy experience is “not something you inherit” — a swipe at Graham’s appointment to fulfill her brother’s current term. Ken Cuccinelli, a former Trump administration official, expressed support for Norman, writing that Graham has “worked hard to hide any firm positions, and here she is at least being honest.”

“It very much confirmed many of our suspicions that while she might be a very nice lady, she is woefully underprepared or unprepared to be one of the 100 U.S. Senators in the Senate,” state Rep. Jordan Pace, who is supporting Norman in the runoff, said in an interview.

Norman said in a statement that South Carolinians deserve a senator with “know-how” on foreign policy: “Whether it’s spy balloons flying overhead or buying up land near South Carolina military bases, China continues to prove that it is a threat to the United States.”

Graham’s campaign, asked to clarify her response on U.S.-Taiwanese relations and her critics’ attacks over her misstep, pointed toward comments she made in the spin room after the debate: “What’s important are the people of South Carolina. They’re worried about their pocketbooks more than they’re worried about the South China Sea, quite honestly.”

Graham’s answer is also raising eyebrows among some of her own allies, with less than a week before next Tuesday’s election. And it increases the pressure on President Donald Trump, who had championed Graham’s appointment in July, encouraged her to run for a full term and is even planning to rally with her on Friday to boost her election chances.

“[Darline] just doesn’t have the experience of executing, you have to be able to deliver a story about herself and right now her story is that she’s Lindsey Graham’s sister,” said a former Trump administration official, granted anonymity to speak openly about private conversations.

The White House is still backing Graham, this person said, because the president had a close relationship with the late senator but also sees her as a better alternative to Norman, who endorsed Haley over Trump in the 2024 Republican presidential primary.

A second person familiar with the White House’s thinking, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said, “POTUS is still all in on the endorsement.”

The White House declined to comment on Trump’s support for Graham.

Still, the flub highlighted the danger for Trump, as he seeks to propel a political novice into a six-year term in the Senate and avoid yet another stain on his endorsement record. His high-profile rally for Graham in Myrtle Beach later this week is a particularly notable step in a year otherwise marked by a decrease in his explicit campaign travel.

Norman, for his part, said during the debate that Taiwan is a “definite ally” and that Trump is right to enable them to “defend themselves against China.” He declined to take a swipe at Graham over her comment in real time, but that hasn’t stopped his supporters from hammering the newcomer for the embarrassing misstep.

Graham’s stumble was a far cry from her late brother’s hawkish defenses of Taiwan, in which Lindsey Graham had openly criticized the expansionist aims of Chinese President Xi Jinping, called allies of China “dirtbags” and stressed the need to maintain the status quo between Beijing and Taipei to protect U.S. national security interests.

“Anyone running for a seat in Congress should be able to explain to the American people why Taiwan is important to American interests. Taiwan is a vibrant democracy of 23 million people and the source of over 90 percent of the world’s advanced semiconductors,” said Bonnie Glaser, managing director of the German Marshall Fund’s Indo-Pacific program. “A Chinese takeover by force would shatter U.S. credibility with its allies across the Indo-Pacific.”

American intelligence has long suggested that China’s People’s Liberation Army will be sufficiently capable of seizing the island starting in 2027.

Trump in June said he was open to speaking with Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te, despite China’s warnings against doing so, in what would be the first direct dialogue between American and Taiwanese leaders in decades.

But the U.S.’ war with Iran is casting doubt on how effective an ally the Trump administration will be if China does invade Taiwan. Extended naval deployments to support airstrikes against Iran and a corresponding blockade of its ports have left the U.S. without a deployed aircraft carrier in the Indo-Pacific, as the USS George Washington steams toward the Middle East to relieve the extended Abraham Lincoln carrier, for instance.

The heightened risks and the rapid race to replace Lindsey Graham have left some in South Carolina’s GOP circles feeling less than optimistic about the choice they have to make to select a key proxy in Washington.

“It was shocking how we’re gonna give someone who was on stage last night six years in the U.S. Senate, and I think that’s the overall impression people are having today” said one South Carolina-based Republican operative who has stayed neutral in the Senate race and was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “One of these two is gonna get six years in the Senate? Like, big hanging question mark.”

​Politics

Republicans are struggling to reverse the damage President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda has done with voters.

With less than 90 days until the midterm election, the Trump administration has sought to keep Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials out of the headlines, pulling back on the high-profile, flashy raids in blue cities and minimizing public clashes with community members and protesters.

But new results from The POLITICO Poll show that half of Americans, including nearly a quarter of Trump’s 2024 voters, still say the president’s mass deportation campaign is too aggressive. That’s virtually unchanged from polling numbers in January and April, amid mounting political outrage over federal agents killing two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis.

Non-MAGA Trump voters are twice as likely as self-identified MAGA voters to say the president’s mass deportation campaign is too aggressive — 31 percent compared with 15 percent, according to the new poll, which was conducted Aug. 8 to Aug. 12.

The persistence of that negative voter sentiment underscores a vulnerability for Republicans heading into November, as the party grapples with its message and policy approach on an issue the GOP once dominated. Immigration was a reliable winner for Republicans, with the party rallying voters around border security and public safety. Now, they’re struggling not only to convince persuadable voters, but also hold together their own coalition as it splinters over deportations.

“Voters really did want border security, but they did not want to see abuelita taken away because she’s been here for 40 years but without documentation,” said Arizona-based GOP strategist Barrett Marson.

The poll, conducted by London-based polling firm Public First, found a notable share of Americans believe the administration has shifted how it is conducting deportations following the fatal shootings, but that has not been enough to reverse Americans’ views of the administration’s deportation strategy.

A 56 percent majority of Americans say there has been at least a small shift in the way the Trump administration has been conducting its deportation campaign. But a plurality of those respondents, 44 percent, say the shifts have made no difference in how much they trust the administration on immigration. Thirty percent say the shifts make them less willing to trust the administration on immigration.

Among the 71 percent of Trump voters who said they’ve observed at least a small shift from the administration, nearly half, 48 percent, say those shifts make “no difference” in how much they trust the administration on immigration. Nineteen percent said the shifts make them less likely to trust the administration, while 29 percent said they’d be more likely.

Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster in Washington, said that even with the lower-profile approach, the administration’s goal of increasing arrest and deportation numbers remains. That conflicts with what many voters broadly support: targeting immigrants in the country illegally who have committed crimes.

The lack of a change in voter sentiment is “not that surprising at all,” Ayres said. “It’s a lot easier just to go into an airport and find somebody who had overstayed a visa, had applied for an extension … and throw them into handcuffs and put them in a detention center. That’s the easy way to get the numbers up, and a great way to thoroughly antagonize public opinion.”

Another Republican strategist, granted anonymity to speak candidly about the landscape, said Trump “ran on border security, and he’s following through.”

“But the visuals of wins are unfortunately overshadowed by the visuals of chaos,” the strategist said. “There’s no question that the wall to wall coverage of the chaos that follows ICE makes voters squeamish.”

The White House pointed to polling from this spring that showed that 80 percent of Americans support deporting unauthorized immigrants who have committed crimes, as well as a Department of Homeland Security press release that highlighted arrests of immigrants who had been accused of sexual assault of a child, forcible sexual abuse and drug posession.

“Americans sent President Trump back to the White House with a clear mandate to deport criminal illegal aliens. Every single day the Trump Administration is delivering on his promise to the American people to remove murderers, pedophiles, rapists, and gang members from American communities,” said White House spokesperson Lauren Bis. “Americans are grateful to the President for removing these criminals from their neighborhoods and for Making America Safe Again.”

The GOP’s stronghold on immigration as a campaign issue eroded soon after the president’s return to the White House. Soon, robust enforcement efforts led to viral images of arrests inside courthouses, at airports and on neighborhood streets. The backlash brewed for months, and peaked this year amid the killings of Alex Pretti and Renée Good in Minnesota.

The White House moved quickly to contain the political fallout, sidelining then-Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino and deploying border czar Tom Homan to ease tensions. The administration has since sought to avoid controversy on immigration ahead of the midterms, emphasized criminal arrests and changed leadership at the Department of Homeland Security. Since Markwayne Mullin took the reins in March, he has reversed contentious policies, including a plan to turn massive warehouses into detention facilities.

Still, some Republicans are particularly worried that the hardline immigration stance was hurting the party with key voting blocs, such as young voters, moderate Republicans and Latino voters. The president won 46 percent of the Latino vote in 2024, the highest share of any GOP presidential candidate in modern history, but these voters have grown increasingly concerned with Trump’s deportations policy.

Democrats, meanwhile, are highlighting the Trump administration’s aggressive tactics on the trail, betting that more voters are repulsed than grateful for the increased presence of ICE and other federal agents in their communities. Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, who won the Democratic primary for Senate last week, used her victory speech to rail against her opponent, GOP nominee Michele Tafoya.

“Michele Tafoya was all in with Trump when ICE was terrorizing our neighbors,” she said.

Republicans, for their part, are fractured over the path forward, as immigration hawks battle with wary moderates who are pushing for a targeted focus on criminals.

Not only are non-MAGA voters more likely than MAGA voters to say Trump’s mass deportations campaign is too aggressive, there’s also a stark divide in how each faction supports the goals and implementation of his immigration agenda, The POLITICO Poll found. Nearly two-thirds of MAGA Trump voters — 64 percent — say they support both the goals and implementation of his deportations campaign, compared to just 35 percent of non-MAGA Trump voters.

The president’s MAGA supporters and immigration hardliners have argued that the administration is going soft on the president’s mass deportation vow, potentially turning off the far right base at a time when the party can’t risk a lull in turnout.

The split flared up last month when Mullin temporarily paused some ICE vehicle stops — a tactic the agency was using to increase arrest statistics — after two ICE-involved shootings during vehicle stops in Texas and Maine. While some Republicans welcomed Mullin’s response, the president’s MAGA supporters portrayed it as weak.

“We are being betrayed in real time,” conservative commentator Tomi Lahren said on X at the time. “If you want Trump voters to stay home in November, keep this up Markwayne and co.”

The president, after online pushback, reversed the DHS order.

​Politics