Except for the cash, Trump didn’t get what he wanted
Well, the people have spoken. Sort of.
Several major elections this week, and the big story was Georgia.
The race Donald Trump certainly seemed to care about most was a Republican primary there involving his enemy, Gov. Brian Kemp.
Trump, as the world knows, hates Kemp for insisting on reporting the accurate results of Georgia’s voting in the 2020 presidential race. Trump recruited former Sen. David Perdue to run against his enemy, and Kemp demolished Perdue by more than 3-1.
Same story with Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, who Trump told to “find 11,780 votes” after the presidential election and give him the win. Didn’t happen! Yet this week, Raffensperger did so well with Georgia Republican voters that he’s not even going to face a primary runoff.
If you’ve got an optimistic nature, here’s a spin you can put on the whole story: Tuesday’s results showed regular Republicans aren’t all still steaming about how the 2020 presidential election was stolen from their man. And they’re not all going to the polls to get revenge.
Compared with the elementary school shooting in Texas, everything else about this week will be a political footnote. But some of the footnotes are certainly interesting. If we want to pick a theme for Tuesday’s elections, it might be that Trump’s influence isn’t nearly as strong as he thinks it is, and that he may be the only American voter still revisiting the 2020 election on an hourly basis.
Getting over it is something Trump can’t abide. Consider the primary in Alabama for a Republican Senate candidate. Perhaps you remember Trump began by backing Rep. Mo Brooks, then changed his mind and unendorsed him. Cynics believed Trump had just decided Brooks was a loser, but it’s also possible the congressman had offended our former president by urging voters to “look forward.”
That’s the wrong direction to mention when you’re hanging out with the Trump camp.
“Mo Brooks of Alabama made a horrible mistake recently when he went ‘woke’ and stated, referring to the 2020 presidential election scam,
‘Put that behind you, put that behind you,’” Trump said as he retracted his endorsement.
Brooks got less than one-third of the vote, behind Katie Britt, the former chief of staff of retiring Sen. Richard Shelby. Since Britt failed to get 50%, there will be a runoff. Winner faces Democratic nominee Will Boyd this fall.
Trump’s biggest election night triumph may have been Herschel Walker, the former football player he backed for a Georgia Senate nomination. Walker now will be running against Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock, who will probably take note of a few items on Walker’s resume Trump overlooked. Including the day on the campaign trail when Walker expressed doubt about the theory of evolution. (If it were true, Walker mused, “Why are there still apes? Think about it.”)
On the plus side, there was Walker’s eagerness to spend $200,000 entertaining at Mar-a-Lago. Nothing raises the former president’s enthusiasm for a candidate like a willingness to make Donald Trump wealthier.
Reporters found that seven of the Republicans who Trump endorsed this year spent a total of more than $400,000 in campaign money at the resort. So yeah, our ex-president lost a lot politically this election season.
But at least he gained a chunk of cash.