GOP Summer of Chaos: Trump Kicks Off “Revenge Tour”

Washington Post: “Backstage dramas and prospect of complicated primaries are enveloping Republican politics as Trump moves to weaponize his remaining power.”

Donald Trump kicked off his summer “revenge tour” in Ohio this weekend –– but the rally was “illustrative of the kind of ‘help’” that Trump will provide Republicans ahead of 2022: “a heavy focus on himself.”  

Cleveland.com, Bloomberg and The Sandusky Register all wrote how Ohio’s Republican Senate primary candidates have been “falling over themselves to cozy up to former President Donald Trump for months” — and all received only “tepid responses when Trump polled [the crowd] asking who they liked best.”

Additionally, new reporting from The Washington Post details how top Republicans are worried that Trump’s outsized influence on key battleground primaries could “backfire by allowing Democrats to maintain control of the House and Senate.” 

Washington Post: Trump’s endorsements: revenge against enemies, rewards for friends and purveyors of election falsehoods
By Michael Scherer and Josh Dawsey

Key Points:

• His endorsement is the hottest ticket in Republican primary politics in many states, strategists say. But some around him and in senior positions in the party want Trump to give them sparingly, fearful that losses and a diminished brand could backfire by allowing Democrats to maintain control of the House and Senate.

• The backstage dramas and prospect of complicated primaries are enveloping Republican politics as Trump moves to weaponize his remaining power over fellow Republicans more than a year before the next elections. Deprived of his social media outlets and stripped of his governing pulpit, the former president has found new strength by weighing in on local, district and statewide contests.

• Candidates are now vetted for their previous comments about Trump and what they have said on social media.

• Some of the early involvement has caused concern among House and Senate Republican leaders who worry that Trump will push weaker candidates to the general election and give Democrats an advantage.

• Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who is leading the Republican effort to reclaim the Senate and has vowed to support GOP incumbents but otherwise stay out of primaries, has encouraged Republican leaders to stay neutral in open-seat contests such as the ones in North Carolina and Alabama, where the former president has made endorsements, and Missouri, where former governor Eric Greitens has been courting Trump’s backing by hiring a coterie of his former advisers and publicly suggesting that the former president might be reinstated to office later this year. Greitens left the governorship in scandal, and some Republicans worry that his presence on the ticket would be problematic in the general election.

• But those desires clash with the party’s continued dependence on Trump. Last week, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which Scott leads, pitched potential donors on VIP seats to a Trump rally if they gave money, even as he defied Scott’s wishes and endorsed incumbent Murkowski’s opponent in Alaska, according to an email reviewed by The Washington Post.

• Trump’s endorsements have done little to clear crowded primary fields because candidates who share the former president’s politics bet that voters will still make their own decisions.

See also: The Hill: Past criticism of Trump becomes potent weapon in GOP primaries; HuffPost: After Criticizing Trump, GOP Senate Candidates Now Desperate For His Endorsement; Roll Call: Trump could shake up key Senate races with endorsements; National Journal: Trump is sabotaging the GOP’s Senate prospects; Axios: Pro-McConnell PAC prepared to intervene in 2022 primaries; CNN Analysis: Mitch McConnell was asked about Trump and 2022. His answer is hilarious.

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