When Donald Trump punished Pennsylvania
Deep into election night 2016, Pennsylvania — with its crucial 20 electoral votes — helped propel New York businessman Donald J. Trump into the White House. You would think he would be grateful. Not so much.
One of the candidates for the Republican nomination for the Senate from Pennsylvania describes a very telling exchange between himself and then former President Trump, which took place around the beginning of May of 2022. David McCormick tells the story in his new book, “Superpower in Peril: A Battle Plan to Renew America.”
I have zero connection with him. He would not know me if he tripped over me. But I think this is an important story to tell.
After being escorted into Trump’s office at Mar-a-Lago, McCormick politely asked the former president to stay out of the primary contest between himself and Dr. Mehmet Oz. “Let the voters decide on their own,” he implored Trump.
Trump called in one of his assistants to turn on the large television in his office and play a clip from the Bloomberg business network where McCormick was being interviewed soon after the disturbing events of January 6th. As McCormick recounts in his book: “I was asked about the political divisiveness in America, I said Trump bore some responsibility. In the same segment, the interviewer asked what I thought about Biden’s first days in office and his recently stated goal of unifying the country, and I wished him well. President Trump was unhappy
with both comments.”
Because he told the truth and wished Biden well in unifying the nation, McCormick was about to feel the full wrath of Trump.
Just about two weeks after the Mar-a-Lago meeting, McCormick was in his pickup truck driving home from a rain-soaked campaign event in Westmoreland County when he turned out the radio to hear Trump speaking at the Oz rally. And what he heard shocked him.
“Dr. Oz,” said Trump. “Is running against the liberal Wall Street Republican named David McCormick.”
“For the next few minutes I sat in silence,” McCormick writes, “listening as the former president of the United States attacked me at a fairground a mere twenty miles away. He called me Wall Street, not Main Street. Soft on China. A Globalist, not America first. He labeled me weak, not a fighter, and said I’d go to Washington and ‘fold’ like an establishment Republican. I’d been called many things in my life ... but I’d never been called weak or had my patriotism questioned. The man Trump described wasn’t me.”
No, it wasn’t Mr. McCormick, but it was a man Trump wanted to punish for not properly genuflecting before him.
For the record, I believe the vast majority of Trump’s policies while president were excellent. He did put America first and the nation greatly benefited from his commitment to those policies. But also, for the record, I abhor his bullying, insult-comic personal attacks on those he either opposes or feels are not being sufficiently loyal to him.
As one who worked in the White House for two presidents, it always saddened me to watch and hear Trump disrespect the former office of Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln in some of the crassest and most sophomoric ways possible.
Over the course of the 2022 midterms every single Republican I spoke with hoped that McCormick would defeat Oz in the primary. They felt he was the best candidate to take on then Democratic Lt. Governor John Fetterman in the general election.
They felt that way because McCormick was from Pennsylvania; he was a graduate of West Point; he was a paratrooper; he got a Ph.D. from Princeton; he served in the departments of the Treasury and Commerce in a previous administration; and he was the CEO of one of the world’s largest investment firms.
Would he have beaten Oz? Many experienced political observers think he would have. Would he have been a better senator for Pennsylvania than Fetterman? We will never know, but millions of people in the Keystone State and around the nation believe he would have been.
The main reason we will never know is because McCormick dared to speak the truth and to wish his new president well. And for that offense, Trump decided he had to bigfoot McCormick out of the primary race in favor of celebrity doctor Oz.
Thanks in part to Trump’s hurt-feelings-driven help, Oz defeated McCormick in the primary by about 0.1% of the vote.
Trump succeeded in “punishing” McCormick. But in the process he hurt the people of Pennsylvania.