Maybe I just missed it in the past but I’ve never seen the category “pending announcement” when a presidential candidate lists who he’s been endorsed by. Trump has several, including two senators also up for contested reelection bids next year: Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Rick Scott (R-FL). Trump, who lists Roger Stone, former Sheriff Joe Arpaio, Hungarian fascist Viktor Orbán, the My Pillow Guy and elephant hunters Eric and Donald Trump, Jr as endorsers, notes that he has “pending endorsements” from Florida Congress members Maria Elvira Salazar and Bill Posey plus Andrew Clyde (GA), John Joyce (PA) and Dan Meuser (PA). Gee, if John Dolmayan, the drummer of System of a Down and owner of Torpedo Comics in Vegas can come right out and say it, why is Josh Hawley holding his weiner and shaking like a cold wet dog before spitting it out? Is he afraid of what Lucas Kunce will say about him when he endorses this guy?
Yesterday, Alex Isenstadt reported that Team Trump now knows how to play the Inside Game, which explains a lot more than how he’s swamping DeSantis in the endorsement hunt. DeSantis has 3 members of Congress— Laurel Lee of Florida and crackpots Tomn Massie of Kentucky and Chip Roy of Texas. OMG— and I just found another category for DeSantis… “pending endorsements.” This is interestingly; he’s got Aaron Bean (FL), Ken Buck (CO), Virginia neo-Nazi Bob Good and Darin LaHood (IL). Anyway, Isenstadt wrote that when Señor T quietly huddled last month with a group of Louisiana Republican Party leaders at Mar-a-Lago, “it was part of a broader effort to cultivate the support of the powerful officials who will decide the party’s 2024 nominee. It was also an attempt to not repeat the early mistakes that plagued Trump’s first presidential campaign— mistakes that have stuck with the former president some seven years later. Trump has told advisers he remembers well what happened in Louisiana during the 2016 race. After winning the primary, he was outmaneuvered by his chief rival, Sen. Ted Cruz, who understood that it was the state’s delegates that mattered at the Republican National Convention. Cruz ended up performing better than expected in the state’s delegate fight. And after the imbroglio, Trump brought in veteran Republican strategist Paul Manafort as part of an effort to bring a level of professionalism to his delegate operation. In the years since, he has told advisers: ‘I won the primary but lost the delegates.’ And when he sat down with the Louisiana Republican Party leaders, the story of that delegate fight with Cruz was among the topics discussed.”
“Now engaged in another delegate battle,” wrote Isenstadt, “Trump has been aggressively courting party leaders— in Louisiana and elsewhere— who are expected to be delegates at the party’s 2024 convention in Milwaukee. He’s been dining with them at Mar-a-Lago, chatting them up at party events and offering them endorsements.” Imagine what’s going to happen when Trump refuses to endorse DeSantis endorsers like the incumbents mentioned above and scores of local legislators, particularly in Utah and Michigan. And I don’t expect Trump to forget that Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch endorsed DeSantis— as well as Elon Musk, Piers Morgan, Ken Griffin and Adam Laxalt, nor Ralph Norman (R-SC), who endorsed Nikki Haley.
“In Michigan,” wrote Isenstadt, “he has worked to ensure he is on smooth footing with Kristina Karamo, the state’s newly elected party chair. Trump had earlier endorsed a rival candidate in the February contest for Michigan Republican Party chair, but he personally congratulated Karamo when he saw her at the Conservative Political Action Conference in early March, according to a person familiar with the exchange. Trump has used his much-coveted endorsement as a tool to win over would-be delegates.” That said, members of the Michigan legislature have flocked to DeSantis in droves, including state senators Michael Webber, Joe Bellino, Aric Nesbitt, Lana Theis, Dan Lauwers, and Kevin Daley, plus state Reps Gregory Alexander, Brian BeGole, Timothy Beson, Mathew Bierlein, William Bruck, Phil Green, Jaime Greene, Mike Harris, Tom Kunse, Tom Leonard, Luke Meerman, Mike Mueller, Jerry Neyer, Pat Outman, Brad Paquette, Bryan Posthumus, John Roth, Alicia St. Germaine, Donni Steele and Curt VanderWall!
Trump advisers believe their early outreach will give them a head start over rival candidates, who lack Trump’s long-standing connections to party officials.
“The Trump campaign … has spent the last eight years fine tuning its unmatched operation,” said Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesperson. “For any other campaign to think they can come even close to what President Trump has built is laughable and delusional.”
What Trump’s campaign is trying to avoid is a rerun of the 2016 national convention, when Cruz waged a last-ditch effort to stop Trump from winning the nomination. While it ended up being unsuccessful, it was embarrassing to Trump.
Many of Cruz’s top alum are now serving on a super PAC bolstering Trump’s chief primary rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. The group includes former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, who in 2016 helped spearhead the anti-Trump push at the convention and at one point threw his credentials on the floor in protest.