'Bad advice': Republicans criticize Trump's policies without going directly at him

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump may at times do things that Republicans don’t like, but they say it’s not his fault.

The reticence of Republicans to criticize Trump directly is not new, but there has been an uptick in recent months of Republicans using the rationale that it’s not Trump making bad decisions — it’s that he’s received “bad advice” or is not actually serious about some of his most high-profile policy proposals.

It’s a way for them to disagree with the president’s ideas without actually disagreeing with him.

Though he is not alone, Sen. Thom Tillis uses the strategy most often. The North Carolina Republican, who is not running for re-election, is more willing to break with the president than others in the party. But even he often goes at the president through the side door.

Tillis has said Trump has gotten “bad advice” on issues ranging from a proposed U.S. takeover of Greenland; repeated attacks on Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell; criticisms of Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, on approving judicial nominees; and the pardon of Jan. 6 rioters.

“The president has been given bad advice, and whoever gave him bad advice should probably not be in that role,” Tillis told NBC News last week of Trump’s Greenland pronouncements.

The idea of conquering a territory the size of Greenland — against the will of many of the people there, as well as the current steward, Denmark — is unpopular with most congressional Republicans, and even more so with the general public.

Despite the widespread opposition to the plan, Republican lawmakers have tiptoed around criticizing the president, again saying he is not serious or has been poorly advised.

“All this stuff about military action and all that, I don’t even think that’s a possibility,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told reporters last week. “I don’t think anybody’s seriously considering that.”

Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., told reporters Trump had “trolled” the media.

Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., a staunch Trump supporter, also directly brushed off the idea that Trump was serious about using military force to invade Greenland, even as the president keeps the option on the table.

“Even a modestly intelligent ninth-grader knows that to invade Greenland would be weapons-grade stupid,” he told reporters earlier this week. “Now, President Trump is not weapons-grade stupid, nor is [State Secretary] Marco Rubio. They do not plan to invade Greenland.”

On Sunday, Trump reiterated his belief that, “One way or the other, we’re going to have Greenland.”

Trump has had a solid grip on the Republican Party for the past decade, able to make and break the careers of politicians. That power has made direct criticism of Trump a third rail of modern Republican politics, something on full display during his second term. Over the past year, Trump has proposed initiatives that have seemingly been at odds with conservatives and his own MAGA political base, leaving them to blame unnamed external forces for Trump steering off course.

“America First is experiencing a hijacking right now,” Paul Dans, the Project 2025 architect who is running against Trump-endorsed Sen. Lindsey Graham in South Carolina’s GOP primary, told NBC News, adding that Trump is “getting bad advice and is being kept in a bubble.”

Dans’ comments came late last year as Trump was starting to face pushback from his base over comments about Chinese students studying at U.S. universities. Trump said the U.S. needed to bring in more workers from overseas through the H-1B visa program because native-born Americans lack “certain talents.”

At the time, Trump was also at odds with many conservatives over the opening phase of his plan to implement across-the-board tariffs, in part to cut trade deals with other nations. It’s an economic policy traditionally opposed by Republicans, who prefer a more free-market approach.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., directly blamed Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro for the proposal.

“Yeah, it’s not the president,” Paul said in April. “I mean, Navarro is a protectionist. He thinks that tariffs are good and that trade is bad, and so he’s wrong on the issues.”

Reached for comment for this article, a White House official defended the president's work on the economy.

"President Trump pledged to turn the page on Joe Biden's affordability crisis, and the Administration will continue to use ever tool possible to deliver," the official said in a statement.

The issue of Powell and the Federal Reserve has also created complications for Trump’s allies. Over the summer, Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, told NBC News that he thought the president shouldn’t have named Powell chair of the central bank in 2018. But, he added, it wasn’t Trump’s fault.

“Sometimes you make bad decisions and are given bad advice,” he said. “And President Trump was obviously given bad advice by somebody he trusted.”

Trump has pressured Powell for months to further lower interest rates. That fight has included repeated threats to remove and sue Powell, despite the central bank’s independence. On Sunday, Powell said the Justice Department opened an unprecedented investigation into the Fed over renovations to its Washington-based headquarters.

Trump told NBC News this week that he didn’t know anything about the probe in advance, while adding that he believes Powell has “hurt a lot of people.” Tillis swiftly came out with a statement warning that the “independence and credibility” of the Justice Department have been called into question, and that he would oppose confirming any of Trump’s Fed nominees until the matter was “fully resolved.” But he told NBC News this week that he wasn’t holding it against Trump himself.

“The president’s obviously trying to back up a decision that, at the time, he knew nothing about,” Tillis said.

Trump in recent weeks has also pushed a series of economic proposals to address Americans’ continuing worries about high prices. In November, he floated the idea of a new 50-year mortgage, which was widely panned on both the left and the right as a policy that could actually cost homeowners more in the long run. Trump allies blamed one of his top officials on housing policy for giving the president bad advice.

Some of his more recent economic ideas are policies that have been pushed by progressives. Among the ideas are banning institutional inventors from buying up single-family housing, ordering mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to invest $200 billion in mortgage bonds and capping credit card interest rates at 10%.

Trump has spoken with Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat seen as among her party’s most progressive members, on the interest rate caps, which has amplified concern among Republicans. They have widely said the idea is contrary to conservative economic policy.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said Thursday that he thinks Trump is being steered in the wrong direction.

“And so, you know, he may be getting advice on some of those issues, like, for example, the 10% cap on credit cards,” he said. “Don’t know where that came from. I don’t know. I don’t know the answer.”

While Republicans have given Trump the benefit of the doubt that he would make decisions they like if he were given better counsel, others have found a different pattern.

In a closed-door deposition before the House Judiciary Committee last month, Jack Smith — who, as special counsel, led the investigation into Trump’s efforts to subvert the 2020 election results — said his team found that Trump had a pattern of rejecting information that didn’t fit with his preconceived views, at least around the election results.

“The president got information from people he trusted on other issues. He rejected it whenever it didn’t fit him staying in office,” Smith said. “There was a pattern in our case where any time any information came in that would mean he could no longer be president, he would reject it.”

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com