Hagerty talks elections with Trump
In his first week, Tennessee's freshman U.S. Sen. Bill Hagerty watched in horror as the Capitol riots unfolded around him and decided to back down from his plans to oppose the electoral college results that affirmed President Joe Biden's win despite then-president Donald Trump's weekslong push to block the certification.
Three months after that January vote, the Republican senator hasn't lost standing with Trump, who tapped Hagerty as his ambassador to Japan and lifted him with a Senate endorsement in 2020.
Hagerty said he met with Trump at his Mar-a-lago resort in Florida this week. They even talked about the decision Trump is facing over whether to run again in 2024; Hagerty said Trump is focused on the 2022 elections and hasn't yet decided whether to run.
In the one-on-one meeting, Hagerty gave Trump a rundown of his new election bill. It would largely seek to withhold federal election security funding when states install new election policies, including changes to absentee voting, without first going through their legislatures. The proposal includes an election audit of 2020, but is more cosmetic than realistic in the current Congress, which is controlled by Democrats.
“President Trump certainly felt good about the direction I'm taking it, when he and I were discussing it yesterday,” Hagerty said.
The election proposal is one of the first bills offered up by Hagerty, who is fully staffed but running his shop in temporary office space until the end of the month due to limitations during the COVID-19 pandemic. After the businessman's whirlwind start, he's settled in to a pattern of regular criticisms of the Biden administration.
He has blasted China since his campaign, and isn't in favor of the corporate tax increase or the scope of projects involved in the infrastructure proposal. He added that Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen's idea of a global minimum corporate tax rate won't work with China.
“I think it's folly to believe that China is going to sign up for anything that puts them in the same boat that the Biden administration is trying to put us, in terms of higher corporate taxes,” Hagerty said.