Trump to endorse LGM favorite son JD Vance
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Somebody help me figure out the angle our Donnie is playing here:
Former President Donald Trump is planning to endorse J.D. Vance in Ohio’s crowded Senate GOP primary, according to three sources with knowledge of his decision.
In recent days, Trump began calling donors and advisers to get their opinion on endorsing the “Hillbilly Elegy” author, but he held off under intense pressure from the rival Republican campaigns of Josh Mandel and Jane Timken, the sources said.
“The Mandel people hit the roof,” one Republican with knowledge of the discussions told NBC News, noting that Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan tried to dissuade Trump from the endorsement.
The May 3 primary is winner take all — meaning the candidate with the plurality moves on to the general election in November.
Though Trump’s press shop had already written up an endorsement of Vance, a source close to Mandel’s campaign said Thursday that it threw up a last-minute obstacle for the former president to consider: an internal Republican poll conducted by Mandel’s campaign showing their candidate in front with 33 percent of the vote, followed by Matt Dolan and Mike Gibbons tied at 15 percent. Vance and Timken were tied at 9 percent.
The poll showed that, even with Trump’s endorsement, Vance rose to 15 percent support but was still in a three-way tie for second, with Mandel marginally in the lead at 19 percent — a sign that Trump’s endorsement had weight but was not determinative.
A spokesperson for Trump could not be reached for comment.
Trump has been concerned with Vance, who criticized the former president bitterly in 2016. Vance is also running in about third or fourth place in recent public polling and has barely cracked double digits — a major worry for Trump who doesn’t want to waste his endorsement, the sources said.
Why endorse a guy who before he had his all-too convenient conversion experience used to talk about what a disaster your election would be for America, especially given that at no point has Vance looked like he had any real shot at the nomination? I mean Josh Mandel is as Trumpy as you can get. Why not go with him, especially since I hear he’s really smart and good with money?
Has Vance’s shameless pandering actually worked? I half-expect that these leaks are some sort of characteristically Trumpian cruel joke, and that he’ll shiv the Hillbilly Whisperer at the last moment. I sure hope so anyway. A world with JD Vance in the Senate is one like a world without beer: I suspect the living would envy the dead.
ETA: Commenter worriedman suggests that Peter Thiel is bribing Trump for the endorsement. This is like Occam’s Deluxe Four-Blade Razor in action. It also illustrates how difficult it is for even somebody who should know better (me) to keep in mind the bottomless cesspool that is Donald Trump’s venality.