In a closed-door meeting Wednesday, Rep. Greg Walden (Ore.), House Republicans’ campaign chief, showed his GOP colleagues a short video mocking Hillary Clinton’s email scandal while she was down the hall huddling with Democrats.
Walden’s implied message was simple: Republicans need to stop bashing Donald Trump and turn the focus and media attention back on Clinton, according to several sources who attended the conference meeting.
{mosads}“He just made the point that we need to be highlighting that there are two candidates in this race,” House Republican Conference Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (Wash.) told The Hill after the private meeting in the Capitol basement.
The FBI has been investigating the likely Democratic presidential nominee for months over her use of a private email server while she was secretary of State. But the issue has been overshadowed by what many Republicans see as Trump’s self-inflicted controversies.
For the past three weeks, GOP lawmakers have been hounded by questions about Trump’s comments and behavior, including his racial attacks against a Mexican-American federal judge and his plan to ban Muslims from entering the United States.
Many Republicans on Capitol Hill, including Speaker Paul Ryan (Wis.), have publicly rebuked their party’s presumptive nominee for his anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim rhetoric and policy proposals.
The intraparty warfare has put Trump on defense and led to hundreds of unflattering news stories about the candidate and his floundering campaign.
“The media reports more on Donald Trump than they do on Hillary Clinton,” said one GOP lawmaker in the meeting. “A lot of things have come up with Hillary Clinton: her emails from the State Department. Things that she denies all the time are actually true.
“We talked about how we can do a better job at helping the media, by getting the information out ourselves.”
As chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), Walden has the difficult job this cycle of trying to protect 247 House seats for the GOP, the party’s largest majority since before the Great Depression.
The GOP is expected to keep its majority, but there’s growing concern that Trump will be a liability for a dozen or more Republicans in tough races this fall. An email to the NRCC was not returned.
Clinton was meeting with Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and other House Democrats in another part of the Capitol on Wednesday morning.
In contrast to the GOP hand-wringing over Trump, Democrats projected unity as they welcomed Clinton and rallied behind her. The former first lady received several standing ovations, and the mood was described as light and fun by people in the room.
Trump will come to Capitol Hill on July 7 for what’s expected to be a tense meeting with House Republicans.