The latest gibes come amid a weekslong uproar over Trump's repeated criticism of U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel as biased and unfair because of his Mexican heritage. The claim drew a storm of denunciation, including a strong rebuke from House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, who called it "the textbook definition of a racist comment."



By comparison, the response to the Pocahontas remarks have been mixed and in many cases muted — a sign of how jittery GOP leaders are still trying to find their comfort level with his rhetoric.



"Oh, I think it's done in good humor," said Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Mississippi, who heads the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the organization charged with electing Republican senators in 2016.



Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., normally a ferocious Trump foe, was similarly unfazed.



"It's pretty funny, I thought," Graham said. "I think what he said about the judge was racist. When you're talking about a politician, you got to be able to take a joke. ... If this bothers you, you need to get out of politics."



But others were alarmed.



"He needs to quit using language like that," said Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., a member of the Chickasaw tribe and one of two Native Americans in the House. "It's pejorative, and you know, there's plenty of things that he can disagree with Elizabeth Warren over, this is not something that should, in my opinion, ever enter the conversation. ... It's neither appropriate personally toward her, and frankly, it offends a much larger group of people. So, I wish he would avoid that."



Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who is up for re-election in a state with one of the highest proportions of Native Americans in the country, also chastised Trump.



"I just don't engage in personal insults — that is a personal insult," he said.



The "Pocahontas" line spurred chatter at former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's ideas summit Friday in Park City, Utah, where some attendees said they were aghast at Trump's many race-based lines of attack.