Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) pushed back against his party's increasing line that a weeks-long, delicate bipartisan Senate deal being crafted on foreign defense aid to Ukraine and border security should be rejected purely for the sake of waiting until they can put former President Donald Trump back in office to do something more one-sided.
Doing that isn't productive, and — he suggested — would be bad for Republican messaging.
"I reject the idea we should reserve a crisis for a better time to solve it," Cramer told CNN congressional correspondent Manu Raju. "I don't see how we have a better story to tell when we miss the one opportunity to fix it."
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Most details of the deal, being brokered by Sens. Chris Murphy (D-CT), Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ), and James Lankford (R-OK), are still in flux.
However, in recent days, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) signaled that Trump was leaning heavily on the caucus to reject the deal — and that this could put the viability of the whole thing, which has already been threatened with rejection by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), in jeopardy.
On Thursday, though, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) told the Huffington Post's Igor Bobic that McConnell remains "fully supportive of the border bill," and is committed to seeing through the ongoing talks.
