Donald Trump struggled to remember the identity of his latest Republican nemesis, just hours after he savaged him by name in a brutal social media tirade.
Trump, 79, experienced an apparent memory lapse after he signed an executive order to regulate AI during an Oval Office meeting on Thursday.
A reporter asked the president about the embarrassing Republican rebellion over proposed congressional redistricting in Indiana. The Republican-controlled Senate voted 31 to 19 against the changes Trump called for to boost his party in next year’s midterms.
The rogue Republicans included Rod Bray, the leader of the Indiana State Senate, who Trump had personally blasted in a Truth Social rant on Wednesday night.
“Indiana Senate ‘Leader’ Rod Bray enjoys being the only person in the United States of America who is against Republicans picking up extra seats, in Indiana’s case, two of them,” Trump posted. “He is putting every ounce of his limited strength into asking his soon-to-be very vulnerable friends to vote with him.”
He also vented on Truth Social that Bray is “either a bad guy, or a very stupid one!”
However, Trump drew a very public blank over Bray when asked about the Republicans who had gone against his wishes in the Oval Office the next day. “You had one gentleman, the head of the Senate, I guess, Bray, whatever his name is, I heard he was against it,” the president said.
“He’ll probably lose his next primary, whenever that is. I hope he does, because he’s done a tremendous disservice.”
The president then spoke about how much the people of Indiana “love” him, before circling back and asking for reinforcement on Bray’s name from his aides.
“There’s a man named Bray, as a, I guess, head of the Senate,” Trump said, thinking out loud. “Was that Bray? Is that the name? Bray?” he continued, looking around the room. “And I mean, I’m sure that whenever his primary is, I think, in two years, but I’m sure he’ll go down. I’ll certainly support anybody that wants to go against him.”
Vice President JD Vance had also directly called out Bray on social media, attempting to send a message to Republicans.
“Rod Bray, the Senate leader in Indiana, has consistently told us he wouldn’t fight redistricting while simultaneously whipping his members against it,” Vance wrote on X Thursday. “That level of dishonesty cannot be rewarded, and the Indiana GOP needs to choose a side.”
The reporter who asked Trump about the Indiana Senate vote pointed out Vance had visited the state twice to discuss redistricting and that the president had “spent a lot of time talking about this.”
However, after the humiliating Senate loss and the defiance of his voting orders from his own party, Trump insisted, “I wasn’t working on it very hard, it would have been nice, I think we would have picked up two seats if we did that.”
Despite that claim, Trump has made 10 separate posts about Indiana on his Truth Social account since November 15. Wednesday’s rant about Bray was over 400 words long.
That epic tirade included the threat, “If Republicans will not do what is necessary to save our Country, they will eventually lose everything to the Democrats. Rod Bray and his friends won’t be in Politics for long, and I will do everything within my power to make sure that they will not hurt the Republican Party, and our Country, again.”
Another of Trump’s earlier posts predicted Bray would “lose” in record numbers.
Bray has maintained his silence over the redistricting issue and Trump’s insults, granting only one interview in the last four months.
He told Politico in November of the Senate, “It’s absolutely imperative that we’re able to do hard things here, and in order to do that, to do hard things that maybe not everybody agrees with and maybe even some people get really angry about. They have to have trust in the institution.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House and Bray’s office for comment.
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