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Former US President Donald Trump ignored his advisers by supporting risky Republican candidates like Dr. Mehmet Oz and JD Vance in the competitive primaries of the Republican Party, sources informed The Washington Post.
Trump has endorsed hundreds of candidates for different positions for the elections of November, usually because they are the ones who support his claims of voter fraud.
His advisers fear that he is diluting the power of support and that, If the hopefuls he wants don’t win, his image as a “kingmaker” is in jeopardy, the sources told the newspaper.
“The most important way to defeat him is to electorally undermine the notion that he is the most powerful supporter in the country”, Alyssa Farah Griffin, a former Trump White House communications director turned critic, told The Post.
“It still is, but smart operatives should play him in races where he’s done dumb endorsements.”
The former president has made several risky endorsements, including David Perdue against incumbent Brian Kemp in the Georgia gubernatorial race. Perdue trails Kemp in the polls by seven points , even though he has had the support of Trump.
Likewise, in the race for the Senate in Pennsylvania, the tycoon also showed his support for Dr. Oz in a move that was not expected and that goes against what was advised by his advisers.
Shortly before voicing the endorsement, Trump had dined with Dr. Oz’s rival, former hedge fund CEO David McCormick.
In deciding to support the cardiothoracic surgeon he was met with considerable backlash among the Pennsylvania Republican supporters.
“I am a gamer,” the former president said of the Pennsylvania race, according to a source who spoke to The Post, who requested anonymity.
“There is no rhyme or reason to anything he does. I would have thought he would back McCormick,” Alyssa Farah Griffin told The Post.
However, she said that the American businessman “loves celebrities. Dr. Oz is a fixture of the South Florida country club scene. It’s at all the charity events”.
In this sense, Trump decided this weekend to give his I support “Hillbilly Elegy” author JD Vance in the Ohio Senate race, a decision that also went against the advice of his advisers and people close to him, Insider reported.
Dozens of Ohio Republicans wrote a letter to the former president before declaring their support for him, calling on him to change his mind due to the comments Vance’s previous anti-Trump.
Despite the fact that the writer described himself as “never Trump”, Vance has climbed as an ally of the former executive.
“It’s all about winning! Like others, JD Vance may have said some not-so-good things about me in the past, but he now gets it, and I’ve seen it in spades. It’s our best chance at victory in what could be a very tough race,” Trump said in his endorsement statement for Vance.
The author trails far behind in many polls in the November election battle, but The Post’s source reports that Trump is willing to take the risk.
For his part, Dan Eberhard, a Republican donor, told the newspaper that Trump supporters were “idiots”.
“Their goal is to reward sycophants or upset the apple cart,” Eberhart told the newspaper.
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