WASHINGTON (AP) – Former President Donald Trump is escalating a political war within his own party that could undermine Republican pressure to fight President Joe Biden’s agenda and eventually bring the party back to power.
A day after blasting Senate Top Republican Mitch McConnell as a “cunning, grumpy and shameless political hooker”, Trump on Wednesday reiterated his baseless claim that he was the legitimate winner of the November election in a series of interviews with conservative stores after nearly a month of self-imposed silence.
Trump continued to attack McConnell, accusing the Senate GOP leader of failing to stand up for Republicans after McConnell blew Trump for inciting the January 6 riot of the US Capitol, despite the fact that he acquitted the former president during his second indictment.
“The Republicans are soft. They just hit their own, like Mitch, ‘Trump complained to Newsmax. “If they had spent the same amount of time beating (Senate Democratic leader Chuck) Schumer and (President Joe) Biden, the Republicans would be much better off, I can tell you that.”
Republican officials in several battlefields carried by Biden, including Georgia and Arizona, said the vote was fair. Trump’s legal claims surrounding the vote have been rejected by judges across the political spectrum, including many appointed by the former president. McConnell himself described Trump’s argument as an “unhindered falsehood”.
Leading GOP strategists describe the exploding feud between the former Republican president and the most powerful Republican in the Senate as, at best, a distraction and, at worst, a direct threat to the party’s path to the majority of the House and Senate in the intermediaries of next year.
“I do not think he cares to win,” Steven Law, an ally of McConnell, who is the leader of the most powerful super-PAC in Washington, said of Trump. “He just wants it to be about himself.”
Law noted that Trump has lost several states where Republicans must win the Senate election to win in next year’s quest to break Democrats’ control over Congress, including in Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Republicans also compete in Nevada and New Hampshire, where Trump was defeated, and in North Carolina, where Trump barely won.
If Trump tries to “give himself the center of attention,” Law would say, “it could cost Republicans in the general election seats.
Such infighting is not entirely uncommon after a political party loses the White House, but in this case, the fat factions were prepared to attack each other in public. There was a broad consensus on Wednesday that the ugly clash within parties is likely to extend into Congress’s primary season next year.
However, the stakes may be higher this time around, as key players – including Trump – openly threaten the prospect of creating a new political party, which would jeopardize the existence of the Republican Party.
About 120 anti-Trump Republicans, including current and former officials, met secretly earlier this month to reflect on the future of the GOP. According to an internal survey by one of the organizers of the meeting, former independent presidential candidate Evan McMullin, a majority, or 40%, supported the idea of founding a new party.
“There’s a lot of energy out there for something new,” McMullin said as he encouraged Trump to pursue his threats to set up a Patriot Party. ‘Honestly, I would welcome him to start a new party and take his most loyal supporters along. I think that would be a great thing for the party and the country. ‘
Trump’s future plans are still coming together in West Palm Beach, Florida.
He was banned from Facebook and Twitter for violence, but on Wednesday he broke his month-long silence and gave his first interviews since leaving the White House after the death of conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh.
On Newsmax, Trump said his team is still exploring their options to return to social media and ‘negotiate with a number of people’, while still holding the option of building its own platform on the table.
“We’re looking at a lot of different things, but I really wanted to be a little bit quiet,” Trump said as he bypassed repeated questions about whether he plans to run again in 2024.
“Too early to say,” he said, admitting he had missed the president.
Trump nevertheless said he had no problem communicating whenever he wanted by issuing statements – and made it clear this week that he would not retire quietly.
The former president made a series of personal insults to McConnell on Tuesday in a fiery written statement. The mainstream Republican was perhaps most concerned about his threat to support primary challengers against Republican candidates who did not fully accept his “Make America Great Again” philosophy.
Some were afraid that Trump rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., Would encourage him to run for the Senate, although there was no evidence to that effect. The fears returned to the GOP’s struggle a decade ago when a handful of tea party candidates with luggage came out of their Senate primary and stimulated the GOP to regain a majority.
In Indiana, Richard Mourdock defeated six-year-old Senator Richard Lugar in the 2012 primary, but he imploded after a debate in which he said that pregnancy as a result of rape was “something God intended.” In Missouri, Republican nominee Todd Akin lost after insisting on a local talk show that women’s bodies have ways to avoid pregnancy in cases of ‘legitimate rape’.
And in Delaware, tea party favorite Christine O’Donnell beat a longtime GOP congressman before losing on a large scale in the 2010 general election following reports of personal financial problems, dubious use of campaign funds and allegations that had his ‘witchcraft’.
Now that Trump has sparked a similar populist movement, Republicans need to recruit candidates who can navigate a pro-Trump primary and maintain the nationwide appeal without alienating establishment-minded donors. This is no easy task.
The Republican Senate campaign, led by Senator Rick Scott in Florida, will not get involved in public primary elections. But McConnell’s advisers did not rule out the possibility – even if it angered Trump.
“You can not let madness flicker, otherwise it will eat you alive,” said Josh Holmes, a political adviser to McConnell.
“He just wants to win,” he said of McConnell. “If he has to act as a heat shield, then so be it.”
Meanwhile, Trump broke his monthly obscurity in the media on Wednesday by calling in Fox News, Newsmax and OANN and repeating what Democrats called his “big lie”: his insistence that he win the 2020 election, albeit with millions lost votes against Biden.
Dozens of judges, local election officials and even his own government said there was no evidence of fraud against mass voters, but that did not stop Trump from saying that there was, even after the riot at the Capitol building that left five dead. has.
“Well, Rush thought we won. And so too, by the way. “I think we won significantly,” Trump told Fox.
He did not name McConnell by name, but acknowledged critics in his own party: “We do not have the same support at certain levels of the Republican system.”
Meanwhile, Law sought to downplay Trump’s grip on the Republican Party. He noted that Trump’s approval rating for Republican voters, nearly 80 percent, was similar to that of former President George W. Bush after the Iraq war and the 2007 financial collapse.
The focus on the next election cannot be Trump, he said.
‘We will do everything in our power to focus on Joe Biden and the Pelosi-Schumer Congress. We can win with that, ‘said Law. “The challenge is if there’s a way Trump can find a way to make himself the focus next fall.”
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Peoples reported from New York.