WASHINGTON — As President Donald Trump wrapped up a primetime address in which he rattled off ominous and at times outlandish assertions about U.S. election vulnerabilities, he repeated his demand that Congress pass strict voting restrictions that have been stalled in the Senate.

That plea, which Trump implied was the reason behind the Thursday night speech, appeared to have landed with a whimper among Republicans on Capitol Hill and in campaigns around the country. Most had little to say in its aftermath about an issue the president called among the most urgent facing the nation.

Democrats immediately seized on Trump’s address with a frenzy of talking points to accuse him of trying to undermine the upcoming midterm elections. But the speech drew a muted response from members of the president’s party. He has spent months trying to pressure them into action on the election overhaul measure, which would require proof of citizenship to register and photo ID to vote and would severely limit voting by mail.

Speech Didn’t Move the Needle for Key Republicans

Though Trump’s most devoted loyalists in Congress quickly repeated his call to pass the bill known as the SAVE America Act — demands they have been making for months — most other Republicans stayed quiet, and at least one skeptic indicated that the speech had not moved the needle.

“If it was meant to influence people like me, it didn’t get me there,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, who has publicly opposed the measure, said in an interview Friday. “What we heard last night was there are foreign interests trying to influence us, but they weren’t effective at basically hacking into our system. I don’t think there was much last night that would change views on whether we should pass the SAVE Act.”

Broadly, it was not clear that Trump’s message was resonating beyond the far right of the Republican Party that has long unquestioningly echoed his baseless and unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud.

Republicans on the campaign trail did not seize on Trump’s remarks, instead focusing on issues they perceived to be of greater import. And conservative media outlets found other stories as compelling, if not more so, than Trump’s remarks about election security.

Even ‘Fox & Friends’ Ignored the Speech

On Friday morning, “Fox & Friends,” the program that is usually a megaphone for Trump’s messages, shunted aside the speech. Instead, the hosts opened the three-hour show by highlighting the war in Iran, the wildfire smoke coming from Canada, flooding in Texas and the latest on the cyclospora parasite.

The reaction seemed to reflect disagreements among Republicans over whether Trump’s almost single-minded focus on his elections bill might help or harm their chances in November’s midterm elections.

“Re-litigating 2020 is a mistake,” said Rep. Don Bacon, a retiring moderate Republican from Nebraska. “It’s a losing issue, and most people that are reasonable and aren’t so clouded by partisanship know it’s baloney.”

Democrats argued that Trump offered little beyond the usual litany of grievances about his 2020 election loss. Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., the minority leader, had a rapid response operation ready to rebut Trump’s claims. Lawmakers spread aligned talking points across television appearances and social media posts.

The Republican reaction to the speech was marked by little such coordination. Past primetime addresses by Trump have been accompanied by a planned effort in which GOP lawmakers demonstrate their unity with the president, but such an effort appeared largely absent Thursday night or Friday.

Not everyone kept silent.

Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., who has been one of the most forceful advocates for Trump’s election measure, called for the Senate to stay in session and use every tool at its disposal to pass it. Rep. Tim Burchett, a far-right Tennessee Republican known for his folksy language, thanked the president and urged his colleagues to “pass the dadgum” bill.

But by and large, the vulnerable lawmakers and battleground candidates who are crucial to Republicans’ efforts to hold onto the majority focused elsewhere.

Republican House Members Said They Didn’t Watch Speech

A spokesperson for Rep. Tom Barrett, R-Mich., who is in the middle of a tough reelection fight, said he did not watch the speech. John Braun, a Republican candidate running in a Washington battleground district against Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, said he “did not see the speech” and “can’t make a comment.”

Some Republicans who did watch came away questioning the president’s choice of focus as his party faces an uphill fight to hold its congressional majorities in November.

“We have 109 days until the midterm elections, and I don’t understand talking about what happened six years ago in light of these upcoming elections,” Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, who lost his reelection bid in a primary to a Trump-backed challenger, said Friday at the Aspen Security Forum. He added: “We ought to be talking about things looking forward that our constituents are most concerned about.”

Murkowski, who is not up for reelection this year, said that she worried that Trump’s efforts could shake confidence in the elections and drive down Republican turnout.

“I don’t think it was helpful to us in terms of incentivizing people to get out and participate,” she said.

Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., the majority leader, has faced relentless attacks from right-wing Republicans over his failure to push through the SAVE America Act. As of Friday afternoon, he had not issued a statement on Trump’s remarks, but he acknowledged before the speech that there was little that could force the president’s elections bill from its logjam.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Michael Gold, Carl Hulse, Reid J. Epstein and Erik Wemple/Doug Mills

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