While Trump remains the most influential and popular Republican in the country, many in the GOP have both publicly and privately sought to distance themselves from him, at least somewhat, fearing that too much involvement by the former president in shaping the party’s agenda could isolate many of the Americans who voted him out of office in 2020.

“I think the strategy is: keep him close, but not too close,” one Republican strategist who works on House campaigns said. “He has to be involved, I think to a certain extent, but what you hear Republicans saying now too is effectively, you know, we’re going to run our own campaigns. We’re going to have our own message.”

“What you’re looking at is a conference that is 99 percent united and that’s what always gets lost in the headlines,” Doug Heye, a Republican strategist, said. “The party seems to be moving in a direction, at least nominally, away from Trump, but still on his good side, and away from these extreme issues that don’t resonate with voters anyway.”