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Trump Endorses Multiple GOP Candidates for 2022

Trump Endorses Multiple GOP Candidates for 2022

President Donald Trump is flexing his muscle, unlike any other former president, in endorsing several 2022 GOP candidates.

Clearly establishing himself as still the leader of the Republican Party, Donald Trump’s endorsement is hands-down the most sought after in the Republican Party, and Trump isn’t disappointing.

The former president – eight months removed from the White House – remains extremely popular and influential with Republican voters and politicians as he aims to continue playing a kingmaker’s role in the GOP. 

And as Trump repeatedly flirts with another White House run in 2024, thanks to a spate of recent endorsements, he’s now backed nearly 40 Republicans running in elections this year and next year, from statewide races such as senator and governor to down-ballot contests.

It’s uncharted waters for a former president to remain so immensely involved in party politics. But Trump’s no normal former president.

“Once again, former President Trump is proving to march to the beat of his own drums,” veteran political scientist Wayne Lesperance said. The vice president of academic affairs at New England College said the number of Trump endorsements so far this year are “unheard of in recent political memory.”

The former president’s political endorsements come as the GOP aims to win back majorities in the House of Representatives and Senate in the 2022 midterm elections. Sometimes Trump’s endorsements are in sync with Republican leaders in Congress, and sometimes they’re divergent. And often, they’re bestowed on those Republicans who support his repeated unfounded claims that the 2020 presidential election was “rigged” and “stolen” from him. Among them are secretary of state candidates in Arizona, Georgia, and Michigan, three states Trump narrowly lost last year to now-President Biden.

Regardless of the circumstances, Trump’s backing carries an incredible amount of clout within the GOP, which can make a huge difference in key battleground states, such as Georgia. 

Two months after Biden topped Trump by a razor-thin margin in Georgia, the Democrats swept the state’s twin Senate runoff contests, giving them the majority in the chamber.

For months, Trump’s vowed to return to Georgia, to take aim at the top Republicans in the state – Gov. Brian Kemp, Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger – to politically punish them for refusing to help his efforts to overturn the election results in the Peach State.

Trump has endorsed Rep. Jody Hice in his primary challenge against Raffensperger, and he’s backing state Sen. Burt Jones in the race to succeed Duncan, who decided against running for reelection next year. While Trump has yet to support any primary challenge against Kemp, he’s pledged to return to Georgia to campaign against the governor.

In addition, Trump has already endorsed challengers taking on four of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach him at the beginning of the year for his role in inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol by right-wing extremists aimed at disrupting congressional certification of Biden’s Electoral College victory.  

And Trump’s backing former Alaska commissioner of administration Kelly Tshibaka, who’s challenging longtime Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, the only one of the seven GOP senators who voted to convict Trump in February’s impeachment trial who’s potentially running for reelection next year.

While Trump’s endorsements — for better or worse — immediately impact the 2022 race, Lesperance also sees an ulterior motive. “It seems clear, Mr. Trump is playing the role of kingmaker in a way that ensures he has allies in place should he make a run again for president,” he surmised.

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6 Comments

  1. Alan Scher

    I pray for his success. 2024 may be too late due to the rate of the Biden destruction.

  2. frank stetson

    Yawn.
    What has Biden destroyed?
    Just the twitter shitstorm void might be improvement enough.

    • Dan Tyree

      Frank you were born stupid and have lost ground every day

  3. Joseph S. Bruder

    Getting endorsed by Trump is a sure harbinger of the death of your candidacy. How many candidates will follow Trump’s losing strategies right into the ground? Even Governors from red states (like TX and FL) are trying to blow it by being mini-Trumps. Trump’s favorites have lost a half-dozen contests since the 2020 election. They will continue to lose more.

  4. frank stetson

    Trump’s batting average, thus far, has not been too good.

    – twice impeached to set a new record, he’s got that goin for him
    – the most corrupt administration ever, if you measure by the number of indictments and convictions, pre any pardons which are an admission of guilt in themselves
    – average approval rating of 40% does not bode well for a national vote, if you care about winning a majority or staging an insurrection
    – presided over the largest economic melt-down in our history with 15% unemployment and 31% GDP loss
    – if you exclude the covid loss, Trump added 6.8m non farm jobs, Obama added 11.4m in eight years
    – a one year #3.1T deficit, the largest ever in our history, he has that record too.
    – lost Presidency as one-term wonder matching that baker’s dozen of losers
    – less factory workers at the end of Trump’s reign than when he began
    – no wall completed
    – over 600,000 dead on his watch with dismal results of his covid response when measured against many of the world’s modern countries. Dismal results compared to other countries under Donald J. Trump’s lack of leadership.

    So far in 2021, in 40 special elections there have been two flips, one in each direction, leaving the end result unmoved by anything Trump has done. While there might be a small urge towards the GOP, the urge is not a Trump surge, and, frankly, the left will be running against Trump in every race they can. There was the dismal failure of the GOP in California, why did they even try type failure. There is the consistent and continual losses over The Big Lie. So bad that Trump is avoiding the outcome and just reporting as if his recounters never counted never got severely schooled over their recommendations and total waste of millions of AZ taxpayer dollars, and he just makes up things for his followers to adhere to. And the legal cases will continue to gain steam all through the election season.

    One would think at some time, the electorate will realize that the whole thing is about the money; his $100M and growing war chest used to fund his lifestyle with very little, beyond hot air, actually supporting his endorsements. However, at this point, the electorate is still forking money over, hand and fist, so the flim-flam continues because it pays.

    He can continue to endorse, which he does more for hatred of the other guys, than support for his guy. He can continue to hold his $100M of donor dollars to support his lifestyle. He may even dole a bit out for the cause, who knows. And Trumpian candidates can still try for office.

    He does have that rare ability to convince his faithful financial followers that his loss is their win, down is up, and everything except Trump is the enemy. The facts say his results are far from that.

    And he is in the difficult position of having to blame covid for his yuge economic failures while blaming others for the covid failures while taking credit for the speed of vaccine development. Somehow his base accepts this ludicrous set of alternative facts absolving Trump for his covid failures, accepting all the economic losses and loss of life as par for the course, and even accepting that covid is a lesser big deal than mask wearing, taking preventative medicines, or even social distancing. Apparently hand washing is still OK in Trump land. Perhaps after the Delta surge on the unvaccinated where close to 2,000 unvaccinated Americans are dying every day for weeks unending so far, some Trump votes, the ones left unscathed by covid, will change their view and realize — Trump, he’s a killer, but not in a good way,

  5. ARthur j hess

    In 2012 the porch monkey lost more seats including state house offices than anyone in history