Republican lawmakers are divided over whether Donald Trump should drop his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), who has become a magnet for controversy and negative press since Trump picked him for the role earlier this month.

Some Republican senators believe Trump should have chosen a woman or a person of color so he could have appeal beyond his core base.

Some wondered whether Trump ignored his professional political advisers and instead listened to his son, Donald Trump Jr., and conservative media personality Tucker Carlson in choosing Vance.

“I assume he’s not too happy,” one Republican senator said of Trump’s handling of the barrage of negative publicity his running mate has received over the past 10 days.

“I don’t think Trump likes discomfort — he can create discomfort — but he doesn’t like external discomfort and JD is struggling. I would assume he’s not really happy,” they added.

Others, however, defend the choice, saying Vance could help Republicans in key Midwest swing states. And Trump has endorsed his running mate.

Still, the discontent isn’t limited to the Senate. Several Republicans in the House of Representatives told The Hill last week that they were concerned about Vance’s foreign policy stance, lack of experience and inability to expand the Republican coalition beyond Trump’s base.

Senate Republicans familiar with private conversations with Trump or top members of his team say many of their colleagues recommended other options, such as Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), the Senate’s only Black Republican who played a key role in drafting Trump’s 2017 tax bill.

“It’s pretty widely believed that it was his son and Tucker Carlson who brought him on. I’m sure Susie Wiles and (Chris) LaCivita didn’t,” the senator said, referring to Trump’s top two campaign advisers. “Because they’ve done such a good job of expanding” Trump’s appeal as a candidate.

“Unforced errors,” the senator added.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) tried to stop Trump from picking Vance while on Trump’s plane to the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, The Washington Post reported. Graham argued that Rubio would get more swing votes in the swing states.

And other Republican senators privately warned weeks ago that Trump would be making a serious political mistake if he chose a white man as his running mate.

“Even Trump is smart enough to say that two white men on the Republican ticket in 2024 is a bad idea when you have really good alternatives, and he has really good alternatives,” another GOP senator told The Hill in the spring. “Tim Scott. I think Tim is No. 1.”

A third senator said Trump could help himself in the general election if he found another running mate, but predicted the former president would not want to go through the chaos of shaking up the slate even as Democrats revitalized their fundraising by dumping President Biden.

Under Republican National Committee (RNC) rules, the RNC can only replace Vance as the vice presidential nominee in the event of “death, rejection, or otherwise.”

“Trump would hate anything that would bring him down, but he would never think he made a mistake,” the senator said.

The senator mimicked Trump’s signature line on his reality TV show “The Apprentice”: “You’re fired,” the source said, trying to imitate Trump’s voice.

“Youth is important, but experience is important — more than two years. Before you ever run for the United States Senate, you should at least run for county sheriff,” the senator added. “It sounds like it was a knockout, drag-out fight until the decision was made.”

Instead of Rubio or Scott, as many Republican senators wanted, Trump chose Vance, a rising conservative star he hoped would get his message across to white, working-class voters, particularly in key Midwestern states: Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Now Vance, who was elected to the Senate in 2022, is under fire for his past statements on abortion and his past private criticism of Trump, which sparked a days-long media storm.

Senate Republican Leader John Thune (S-D) defended Vance when asked about the wave of negative publicity.

“The reports are that (Trump) is very happy with that pick and is confident that he will help him not only at the top of the ticket but also in the lower-level elections in parts of the country where we are trying to broaden our appeal,” Thune said.

Asked whether Vance would bring new voters to support the GOP presidential ticket, Thune said his colleague “appeals demographically and geographically to groups of voters that we obviously want to have in our coalition as we head into November.”

GOP strategists believe Vance, the best-selling author of Hillbilly Elegy, will have support among white working-class voters, particularly in Pennsylvania and Michigan.

But Republican senators say Trump is likely to be angered by new reports of 90 emails and text messages Vance exchanged years ago with a former Yale Law School classmate. In the messages, Vance called Trump a demagogue, predicted that black people would suffer if white people voted for Trump and called Trump a “reprehensible human being.”

Although Vance was openly critical of Trump in 2016, before he defeated Hillary Clinton, the recently discovered private messages have brought Vance’s past views back into the media spotlight.

Republican senators predict that Vice President Harris, the presumptive Democratic nominee, will point those comments at Trump during the debate and continue to use them as political ammunition during the campaign.

Vance’s previous comments on abortion also give Democrats ammunition to attack Trump.

In a podcast recorded in 2022, Vance mused about the possibility of George Soros sending a plane to Columbus to “disproportionately load up Black women to have abortions in California” and called for a federal response.

Democrats have focused on Vance’s comments in 2021 that “two wrongs don’t make a right” when asked whether abortion laws should allow exceptions for rape and incest.

And the vice presidential candidate sparked a huge media outcry when his pointed 2021 comment about the country being ruled by “childless cat ladies” resurfaced on social media.

Polls taken after the Republican Party convention in Milwaukee showed that Vance had the worst net favorability rating of any non-incumbent vice presidential candidate since 1980.

A Republican Senate aide said the negative attention Vance is now receiving will be a source of friction in Trump’s campaign.

“If I know Trump, I can’t imagine he’s happy with what he sees. He’s probably thinking, ‘Why did I listen to Don Jr.?'” the source said.

“It was a very confident and overconfident choice,” the aide added.

A former Republican presidential campaign strategist agreed that Trump based his choice for the vice presidency on personal preference, rather than on objective political criteria.

“Vance was picked when the (Trump) campaign was feeling extremely confident. I don’t think he was picked for political reasons, I think he was picked because Trump really liked J.D. Vance,” said one Republican strategist, who added that Trump’s team was concerned about Rubio’s residency status, since he and Trump both live in Florida.

Some Republican senators believe Trump chose Vance because he expected Democrats to retain Biden as their nominee and saw him as a strong counterweight to Biden in Midwestern swing states.

Trump defended Vance in an interview with “Fox & Friends” last week as “fantastic” and maintained that he expected Harris to likely become the Democratic nominee.

“No, it wouldn’t have mattered. And I thought it would probably happen anyway,” he said.

He praised Vance as “essentially pro-worker.”

“He has seen the worker being terribly abused and exploited… He is doing a great job and he has been very well received,” he said.