As the Senate prepares for Thursday’s blockbuster hearing to decide the fate of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, a key player has been missing from efforts to lobby undecided GOP senators — President Donald Trump.

More than a dozen Republican senators said in interviews Tuesday that they haven’t heard anything from Trump —and they think that’s just fine.

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John Thune of South Dakota, the No. 3 Senate Republican, said he was “not aware” of any personal outreach to senators who are undecided on Kavanaugh.

“It’s probably better to see him let the process play out. We’ve got members who want to come to their own conclusions, make their own decisions, and sometimes it’s better that happens independent of the White House,” Thune said.

“I have had no conversations with the president and I’ve never had any conversation with my staff that would indicate the involvement of the president,” added Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who is overseeing Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing.

That’s not to say that Trump hasn’t been following the Kavanaugh drama closely, as evidenced by his public statements and Twitter feed. In statements on Monday night and Tuesday, Trump blasted Christine Blasey Ford and Deborah Ramirez — who have accused Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct in high school and college, respectively. GOP leaders do not believe those statements have been particularly helpful.

During a Tuesday appearance at the United Nations General Assembly with Colombian President Iván Duque Márquez, Trump launched into a defense of Kavanaugh and called the allegations against him “unsubstantiated.”

“Charges come up from 36 years ago that are totally unsubstantiated? I mean, you as watching this, as the president of a great country – Colombia – you must say, ‘How is this possible?’ Thirty-six years ago? Nobody ever knew about it? Nobody ever heard about it? And now a new charge comes up,” Trump said.

“And [Ramirez] said, ‘well it might not be him’ and there were gaps and she said she was totally inebriated and she was all messed up. And she doesn’t know it was him, but it might’ve been him. ‘Oh gee, let’s not make him a Supreme Court judge because of that.’ This is a con game being played by the Democrats.”

But Trump has refrained from lobbying GOP senators directly in a bid to save his high-court nominee. To stay updated on the GOP’s own internal drama, the president’s been in constant contact to with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who serves on the Judiciary Committee, according to White House officials and GOP aides.

But, for now, Trump is leaving everything in the hands of McConnell, trusting that the Kentucky Republican — the man most responsible for putting Trump in a position to name a second high-court nominee — will get the job done.

This is the same pattern that Trump has been forced to use at other critical moments for his legislative agenda on Capitol Hill, even with Republican control of both chambers. While Trump prides himself on his negotiating skills, he’s had his greatest successes with Congress — passage of a massive tax cuts bill or the confirmation of his previous Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, when he takes a hands-off approach.

Conversely, Trump’s biggest legislative defeat — the failure to repeal Obamacare — came when the president was most directly involved in the legislative process. Trump’s heavy-handed whipping efforts on that bill with Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) backfired miserably, and congressional aides said the president was not at all helpful in creating caucus unity.

With the tax bill and the Gorsuch nomination, a different dynamic played out. White House aides and Republican lawmakers managed to keep the president at arm’s length while hammering out details of the legislation, in the case of the tax bill, and ensuring that Gorsuch had the votes to be confirmed — while allowing Trump to gallop in at the end and claim credit.

There are other factors for Trump’s cautious approach on Kavanaugh. A president who was accused of mistreating women before he came to the Oval Office isn’t going to have lot of credibility when it comes to a nominee facing the same accusations.

In addition, some of the key Senate GOP players in the Kavanaugh drama — Murkowski, Susan Collins of Maine, Jeff Flake of Arizona and Bob Corker — have had their own run-ins with Trump during the past two years and aren’t afraid of bucking him again. Pressure from Trump might be the worst thing that could happen right now, GOP senators privately admit.

“Hell no!” said one Republican when asked whether Trump should begin calling rank-and-file Senate Republicans. “Let Mitch do it.”

This goes beyond the tense relationship between Trump White House and Senate Republicans. It extends also to the relationship between Trump and the prominent legal conservatives, who have delivered him the biggest victories of his presidency — but who have always been strange bedfellows.

Trump has from the outset delegated judicial nominations to the Federalist Society and Republican lawmakers. What began with a shortlist of potential Supreme Court nominees vetted by the conservative legal organization and unveiled during the campaign, a successful attempt to win the votes of skeptical Republicans, has continued two years into the Trump presidency.

Should the Kavanaugh nomination fail, that arrangement could easily dissolve. Trump may blame McConnell, Grassley, “fake news” and everyone else for the defeat.

However, if Kavanaugh is confirmed — as McConnell predicted on Tuesday — Trump will be able to step in and claim the glory once again.

“I don’t think he’s interfering at all with the Senate’s work. At least I haven’t seen it,” noted Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah.). “He certainly has an interest in weighing in, there’s no question. I have no trouble if he does, but I think it’d be better for him if he didn’t.”

GOP Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia — both of whom say Thursday’s hearing will determine whether they can still support Kavanaugh – said Trump has not spoken to them about the nomination.

Rubio said the president is “probably focused on the committee first.”

“I haven’t heard anything from the White House,” said Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) “Of course, I want hear what Dr. Ford says.”

Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) hasn’t received any contact from the White House either.

“I never know, so I just answer all my calls,” Isakson joked of the president’s tendency to call senators at all hours. “But it hasn’t happened yet.”

Democrats have all the cover they need to vote in lockstep against Brett Kavanaugh. But a half-dozen of them have refused to go there, even after the pair of sexual assault allegations against the Supreme Court nominee.

Democratic insiders are feeling more bullish than ever that the party’s 49 caucus members ultimately will oppose Kavanaugh. Yet the undeclared bloc of Democratic senators could be a problem for Democratic leaders, who want to put the weight of the nomination entirely on a handful of holdout Republicans.

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“I’m very open. I haven’t closed any doors at all on Kavanaugh. I just want to make sure there’s a fair, open and civil hearing,” said Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, perhaps the most conservative Democrat. “The man has to have a chance to clear his name, but these ladies have the complete opportunity to tell their story.”

Manchin said the allegations haven’t made him any less likely to vote against Kavanaugh than he was two weeks ago: “It hasn’t changed anything. I’m still waiting for this hearing.”

The situation, of course, could change quickly after Thursday’s blockbuster hearing featuring Christine Blasey Ford, one of Kavanaugh’s accuser. Indeed, Democratic leaders are confident that in the end the caucus will stick together and vote against Kavanaugh.

The Democratic caucus’ clutch of moderate senators, who mostly hail from conservative states where voters could punish them for opposing Kavanaugh, is under more pressure than ever from a liberal base furious over the sexual assault allegations.

So most of those intently watched Democrats are deferring their public stance until after Thursday’s scheduled hearing with Ford and Kavanaugh. They’re worried about taking unnecessary political risk by taking a stand amid a swirl of unproven charges and uncertainty about whether the GOP even has the votes to confirm the 53-year-old appeals court judge, according to senators and aides.

Still, Democratic leaders are confident of a unanimous “no” vote against Kavanaugh from their caucus, especially if Ford comes off as credible, according to more than a half-dozen senators and aides.

Sens. Jon Tester of Montana, Doug Jones of Alabama and Bill Nelson of Florida, all publicly undecided, are expected to be firmly in the “no” column, those people said.

Tester said Tuesday that, while he’s watching the Thursday hearing closely, he’s also concerned about his inability to set an in-person meeting with the judge.

“We’re getting close to the end here. I don’t know if we’re ever going to find a time or not,” Tester said, adding that he wants to discuss issues such as privacy, campaign finance law, and abortion. “If I don’t meet with him, it’s a problem.”

Democrats are similarly upbeat that Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) can be persuaded to vote no, senators and aides said. She supported Justice Neil Gorsuch last year and has been intensely targeted by the GOP to back Kavanaugh. But her opponent, Rep. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), created a stir this week when he questioned whether the assault allegations would disqualify Kavanaugh “even if it’s all true.”

She declined to discuss the nomination on Tuesday.

The two biggest wild cards remain Manchin and Sen. Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.). Both are paying close attention to how GOP Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine vote, according to one person familiar with their thinking. And the duo has made clear to fellow Democrats that they’re agonizing over the decision.

“They have let us know that their states are still with Kavanaugh,” said one Democratic senator, who said the press-shy Donnelly was particularly vocal about that on Tuesday at a party meeting.

Joel Elliott, Donelly’s chief of staff, said that “Kavanaugh has support in the state, as you would expect. He’s also strongly opposed by a lot of Hoosiers.”

“There’s a lot of overlap, however, between those two groups when it comes to wanting to hear more from Dr. Blasey Ford during Thursday’s hearing,” Elliott said.

Liberals say they are frustrated that a half-dozen Democrats have not been willing to take a risk and oppose Kavanaugh given his beleaguered status, even calling out Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) for not being publicly opposed to Kavanaugh despite his obvious opposition. Kavanaugh’s national polling has dipped significantly recently, but in battleground states Kavanaugh does not seem to have taken as much of a hit.

Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill is the only vulnerable Democrat to have come out against Kavanaugh in the past two weeks, and she cited his views on campaign finance, not the assault allegations, as her reason. McCaskill said that she’s heard surprisingly little from her constituents about Kavanaugh’s embattled status.

“if a vote on Kavanaugh were actually held today, it’s unclear that even all Democrats would vote no,” said Elizabeth Beavers, associate policy director at Indivisible, a leading liberal group. ”We need all Democrats to immediately pledge to oppose, and we need Democratic leadership to work to ensure this happens as soon as possible.”

It would be risky for some red-state Democratic senators to come out against Kavanaugh right now, according to others in their party. If the Ford allegations fall apart, they could look like props of Democratic leadership — precisely the perception they’re trying to avoid in their campaigns.

“Everyone gets that the political reality for the red-state Democrats is tricky,” said Brian Fallon, a former senior aide to Schumer who now runs Demand Justice, a liberal activist group focused on the judiciary. “But if any of them still cannot bring themselves to oppose Kavanaugh when he has been credibly accused of multiple acts of sexual assault, the backlash from young people and women could be quite problematic.”

But on a nomination as important as the Supreme Court, a hard whipping effort simply doesn’t work on individual senators, according to Durbin.

“A couple of them have said to me: the credibility of this exchange between Ford and Kavanaugh have a lot to do with their final vote,” Durbin said. “No one has announced ‘yes.’ That says something of itself. And the people who are announcing ‘no’ do that at some risk.”

It’s somewhat surprising that Jones and Nelson remain publicly on the fence given that they have a more liberal voting record than Manchin and Donnelly’s. Jones has tweeted repeatedly about the importance of a thorough investigation into Ford’s allegation, and said Tuesday that he also would wait until Thursday to announce his decision. “I’m going through the process,” he said.

Nelson, who’s is in a close reelection battle against Florida Gov. Rick Scott, said Tuesday he also wants to hear from Ford before deciding. Asked whether he also wants Deborah Ramirez, a second woman alleging sexual misconduct by Kavanaugh during his college years, to testify, Nelson replied: “Of course.”

Democratic leaders are not concerned that either will vote for Kavanaugh, according to aides. And Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, the No. 4 Democratic leader, said she likes the way the Democratic vote count is trending.

“I feel good about it,” she said. “Overwhelmingly, people are voting no.”

Asked if there still really a half-dozen undecided senators, she offered her own internal whip count: “Less, maybe.”

President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that the United Nations now feels “like home,” but his speech to the yearly assembly in New York didn’t exactly get a warm reception from world leaders gathered there.

From thinly veiled jabs during their speeches to full-on laughter when he was at the dais, many world leaders condemned Trump’s rejection of “globalism” and what he sees as a broken international system in need of reform.

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Here’s a round-up of how world leaders reacted to Trump during the General Assembly gathering.

French President Emmanuel Macron

Macron, who has cozied up to Trump in the past and invited him to a military parade in Paris on Bastille Day in 2017, rejected Trump’s foreign policy vision and said in his own speech that “no single one of us can effectively combat inequalities.”

The French leader also defended the Paris agreement on climate change, from which Trump withdrew the U.S. in June 2017.

“France continues with all interested parties to spearhead this global fight against climate change,” Macron said. “In the G7, we will be working to see the Paris obligations increased. Should someone be against that, we shall nonetheless press ahead through new fora.”

Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto and Ecuadorean President Lenin Moreno

Peña Nieto, in his last appearance at the UN before handing over the presidential mantle to Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, defended multilateralism as “the best way to defend the sovereignty and dignity of each state.”

In his speech, he also called on the United States to end the commercial embargo on Cuba, saying it would bring benefits for the entire Western hemisphere. Trump tightened restrictions on U.S. business with and travel to the island in an attempt to trigger political change in Havana.

Moreno joined the calls to lift the embargo in his own remarks, saying that as long as the embargo continued, the nations of the world would not be able to reach “true liberty and democracy.”

“We insist on respecting state sovereignty and the principle of non-intervention,” Moreno said. “Militarism is not the answer. It only brings suffering, pain, and death.”

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani

Rouhani’s rhetorical assault in his General Assembly speech was the latest in a war of words with Trump, who has railed against Iran since before arriving in the White House.

Trump last year withdrew from the joint nuclear agreement brokered by the Obama administration and reinstated economic sanctions on Tehran. Rouhani rejected the unilateral moves as signaling “an inability in understanding a complex and interconnected world.”

“It is unfortunate that we are witnessing rulers in the world ride public sentiments and gain popular support through the fomenting of extremist nationalism and racism and through xenophobic tendencies resembling a Nazi disposition,” Rouhani said.

Trump had sharp words for Iran in his own speech, but earlier in the day, he tweeted of Rouhani: “I am sure he is an absolutely lovely man!”

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan

The speeches weren’t all confrontational. Trump has previously lavished praise on Erdogan — the Turkish president who he has said “is getting very high marks” despite criticism for cracking down on political dissent in Turkey — and Erdogan seemed to echo Trump’s talking points Tuesday by calling for reform of the United Nations.

“We need to admit that, in time, the United Nations moved away from the capacity to meet the expectations of humanity for peace and welfare,” Erdogan said. “We expect more abundant and flexible support to Turkey, which has prevented a large refugee influx [from Syria] to spill over elsewhere in the world.”

But he wasn’t entirely on Trump’s side. Erdogan said “those who remain silent in the face of repression against the Palestinians only embolden their oppressors,” seemingly a criticism of Trump’s strident support for Israel.

Assembled world leaders

Perhaps the most obvious sign of the incompatibility between Trump and the United Nations came during the U.S. president’s own speech, when he drew laughter from the audience after boasting of his administration’s success.

“In less than two years, my administration has accomplished more than almost any administration in the history of our country,” Trump said before leaders audibly laughed. “I didn’t expect that reaction, but that’s okay.”

Members of the German delegation were also seen smirking as Trump lambasted the country over a Russian energy pipeline, which he claimed would make the country “totally dependent on Russian energy.”