Some of them struggled to endorse Trump, coming up with halfhearted praise and a collective “meh.” And now a whole group of party elites won’t attend this month’s Republican National Convention in Cleveland, thinking that it would devolve into some kind of Trump-infused circus.

Of course, that’s not their stated reason for skipping out. No, they have a variety of excuses: They’re too busy running their own campaigns, they’d rather watch on television, or they have previous engagements scheduled (like Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake, who apparently has to mow his lawn for the entire four-day political extravaganza)…

In the video above, we recap some of the most tortured excuses.