Day 1,411: With no one left to burn on the other side, Trump begins to set GOP ablaze
For four years, Donald Trump and the GOP have lived in an awkward mutually beneficial relationship.
He was happy to use the party’s money, infrastructure and connections. They were happy to use him for power and potential new voters. Both sides have long been wary of each other, but once Trump won the nomination, they largely aligned on major issues.
Trump’s tentacles were wrapped so tight that he even got the RNC’s chairwoman to drop the “Romney” from her name due to his distaste for her uncle, Mitt.
But now, with an election lost, Trump is set to burn the bridge between the two (even knowing he’ll likely need some part of the party’s apparatus to aid a potential 2024 run). Since Trump can’t just acknowledge he ran a poor campaign and did little to earn another term, he’s pointing fingers at Republicans. Specifically, he’s blaming GOP governors Brian Kemp of Georgia and Doug Ducey of Arizona.
In addition to the tweets above, Trump retweeted a number of his supporters’ tweets blasting the governors.
For Republicans, the blaming of Kemp is especially problematic. Two Georgia Senate runoffs can swing the power to Democrats if they’re able to sweep both races.
Trump is all-but helping Democrats by disenfranchising Republican voters in what are likely to be slim margins of victory for one side and it’s worrying the GOP.
But Republicans are increasingly seeing Trump’s posture as not just rhetoric. They view it as a self-serving quest that could imperil the GOP’s grip on the Senate by depressing turnout in two runoffs races that will decide which party controls the upper chamber. And they are publicly hoping he will refrain from pushing his false fraud claims when he visits the Peach State this week to campaign for Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler.
Even as Trump urges his supporters to vote for Perdue and Loeffler, he is continuing to hammer Georgia’s secretary of state and governor — both Republicans — for what he calls a “fraudulent” result in favor of Biden. Trump even said he was “ashamed” of his endorsement of Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp in 2018, and on Monday called him “hapless.”
Republicans in Georgia are exasperated with his rhetoric, and they’re publicly urging the president to avoid talking about the Nov. 3 election.
At this point, Trump thinks the party let him down in the election. But the party needs Trump. At a minimum, it needs Trump to not sabotage their chances.
But Trump is always out only for himself. If wrecking two Republican Senate seats is the cost for him saving an iota of face, he won’t hesitate to do it, as he’s already showing.
1,411 days in, 51 to go
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