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Trump: Republican Political Kingmaker or Political Meddler?

Is former U.S. President Donald Trump a Republican political kingmaker or just a political meddler? 

The first answers are coming in the month of May.  

The United States is about to get its first significant reading on how much political clout Trump retains over the Republican Party 16 months after he played a role in hundreds of his supporters storming the U.S. Capitol to protest his 2020 election defeat and then left Washington as Democrat Joe Biden became president. 

Trump, who retains a wide Republican following, to this day claims he was cheated out another four-year term in the White House and has teased making another run for the presidency in 2024.  

To that end, he has endorsed nearly 130 Republican candidates in coming party primary elections — state legislative and congressional contenders and incumbents — who share his political vision, with many of them also embracing his contention that Biden fraudulently won. Some of those Trump is supporting have also been accused of abusing women. 

Court after court has ruled that the scant irregularities that may have occurred in 2020 would not have been sufficient to overturn Biden’s victory. Those decisions have not stopped Trump from making the election fraud claims and endorsing his most ardent supporters, even as other key Republicans and interest groups aligned with the party have endorsed their opponents. 

The first test comes Tuesday in the Midwestern state of Ohio, which Trump easily won in the 2020 election, where he has endorsed the Senate candidacy of J.D. Vance, author of a book called “Hillbilly Elegy.” It is a memoir of Vance’s upbringing in Ohio and acts in part as an explanation of why white working-class voters became enamored of Trump during his successful run for the presidency in 2016 and subsequent loss for reelection two years ago. 

Several of the Ohio Republican Senate contenders actively sought Trump’s endorsement but the former president went with Vance even though he had criticized Trump’s 2016 candidacy, saying then that his “actual policy proposals, such as they are, range from immoral to absurd” and describing Trump as “reprehensible.” 

But Vance, as he transformed himself into a politician, recanted his views about Trump, saying, “I ask folks not to judge me based on what I said in 2016, because I’ve been very open that I did say those critical things and I regret them, and I regret being wrong about the guy. I think he was a good president; I think he made a lot of good decisions for people, and I think he took a lot of flak.” 

According to recent polling, Trump’s mid-April endorsement of the 37-year-old Vance immediately doubled his share of the vote and pushed him to a narrow lead in the crowded field. He could now be positioned to win the Republican Senate nomination with just a quarter of the primary vote to run in the November general election against the likely Democratic nominee, Congressman Tim Ryan. 

But Vance’s six-year-old attacks on Trump quickly reemerged as a point of contention in the Republican primary. 

The Club for Growth, a national pro-Republican anti-tax group and often a Trump ally, had already endorsed one of Vance’s opponents, Josh Mandel, a former state treasurer who has pledged that if he wins, he will take on “squishy establishment” Republicans in Washington. After Trump’s Vance endorsement, Club for Growth immediately started airing television ads showing Vance’s repeated 2016 attacks on then-presidential candidate Trump. 

Trump angrily had an assistant send a vulgar message to Club for Growth president David McIntosh protesting the broadcasting of the ad, but the group, rather than backing off, responded by saying it would increase its spending on the anti-Vance ad with his attacks on Trump. 

Three other contenders narrowly trailed Vance in the latest polling, giving them a chance as well in the Tuesday election: Ohio State Senator Matt Dolan, businessman Mike Gibbons, and former Ohio Republican chairwoman Jane Timken. All of them have collected endorsements from various state and national Republican figures. 

In Nebraska

Trump’s grip on Republican politics will also be tested this month in three other states. 

Next up is the May 10 party primary in the staunchly conservative Midwestern state of Nebraska, where Trump on Sunday rallied with gubernatorial contender Charles Herbster, a businessman who has advised Trump on agricultural policy and donated to his campaigns.  

Herbster is denying allegations that he has sexually assaulted multiple women. Trump called Herbster a “very good man” who had been “maligned.” 

“I defend people when I know they’re good,” Trump said. “A lot of people, they look at you and say: you don’t have to do it, sir. I defend my friends.” 

In Pennsylvania

A week later, on May 17 in the Eastern state of Pennsylvania, which Trump lost in the 2020 election, he is backing the Senate candidacy of a celebrity television doctor, Mehmet Oz, in his run for an open seat after Republican Senator Pat Toomey announced he would be retiring. 

Oz, echoing Trump, is disputing the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. 

“I have discussed it with President Trump and we cannot move on,” Oz said at a recent debate. “As all the other candidates up here have outlined, under the cover of COVID, there were draconian changes made to our voting laws by Democratic leadership, and they have blocked appropriate reviews of some of those decisions. We have to be serious about what happened in 2020, and we won’t be able to address that until we can really look under the hood.” 

Oz’s key opponent appears to be David McCormick, a former hedge fund executive and undersecretary of the Treasury for international affairs during the administration of former Republican President George W. Bush. 

Trump’s first choice in the Senate race in Pennsylvania was not Oz but rather Sean Parnell, an Army veteran and former congressional candidate who dropped out of the race late last year after losing a custody battle with his estranged wife over primary custody of their three children. A judge ruled that Parnell had committed some abusive acts toward his wife in the past. 

In Georgia

Last up on the May political primary calendar is Georgia, on the 24th, a state Trump lost in 2020. A grand jury is convening in the state capital of Atlanta to investigate his possibly criminal efforts in a taped telephone call he made to try to convince a state election official to “find” him one more vote than he needed to overtake Biden’s 11,779-vote victory. 

Trump’s anger over his loss in the southern state — the first for a Republican presidential candidate in Georgia since 1992 — has spilled over to the state’s gubernatorial primary. Trump has endorsed former Republican U.S. Senator David Perdue in his race for the state governorship over incumbent Governor Brian Kemp. 

Trump is opposing Kemp’s reelection because he claims Kemp did not do enough two years ago to help him overturn Biden’s victory in the state. 

Polling in the state, however, shows Kemp with a substantial lead over Perdue, who lost his Senate seat in a run-off election in early 2021. 

Trump is also supporting Herschel Walker, a former professional football player for a Trump-owned team, for the Republican Senate nomination in the state. Polls show Walker far ahead in his maiden bid for elected office and will likely face Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock in the November general election. 

In supporting Walker, Trump has ignored advice from Washington Republican political analysts that Walker is a flawed candidate after he acknowledged abusing his former wife, who accused him of holding a pistol to her head and “extremely threatening behavior.” 

 
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Biden Calls Former VP Mondale ‘Giant’ of Political History 

President Joe Biden saluted his “friend of five decades” Walter Mondale on Sunday, traveling to the University of Minnesota to remember the former vice president and Democratic Party elder whose memorial service was delayed for a year due to the pandemic. 

Mondale died in April 2021 at age 93. He is credited with transforming the office of the vice presidency — which Biden himself held for eight years under President Barack Obama — expanding its responsibilities and making himself a key adviser to President Jimmy Carter. 

Mondale “was a giant in American political history,” Biden said of Mondale, known to friends as “Fritz.” He added that Mondale was one of the “toughest, smartest men I’ve ever worked with” both as Senate colleagues and as a mentor when Biden was Obama’s No. 2 and then later as president. 

Biden emphasized Mondale’s empathy, recalling his own promise during the 2020 presidential campaign to unite the country. That’s something the president has strayed from a bit in recent weeks, as he seeks to draw a starker contrast between his administration and congressional Republicans who have opposed it on nearly every major issue. 

“It was Fritz who lit the way.” Biden said. “Everybody is to be treated with dignity. Everybody.” 

Biden added of Mondale: “He united people sharing the light, the same hopes — even when we disagreed, he thought that was important.” 

“It’s up to each of us to reflect that light that Fritz was all about.” 

The invitation-only, 90-minute service Sunday inside a stately campus auditorium featured plentiful organ music. Biden, who received a standing ovation, said he spoke with Mondale’s family beforehand and “got emotional” himself. 

Democratic Sen. Tina Smith called Mondale a “bona fide political celebrity” who still dedicated time to races large and small back in their home state. Minnesota civil rights icon Josie Johnson spoke of what a good listener Mondale was and how he championed inclusiveness. 

Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar described once being an intern who climbed under chairs and a table to carry out a furniture inventory when Mondale was vice president. 

“That was my first job in Washington. And, thanks to Walter Mondale, this was my second,” Klobuchar said of being a senator, noting that Mondale encouraged her to run and taught “the pundits in Washington how to say my name.” 

Democratic Gov. Tim Walz said Minnesota may be better known as Mondale’s home state than its moniker “The Land of 10,000 Lakes,” and praised Mondale’s intellect, humility, humor and optimism. 

“He embodied a sense of joy. He lived his life every single day,” Walz said. “At 91, he was still fishing for walleye. Unlike me, he was catching some.” 

A booklet given to attendees for the “afternoon of remembrance and reflection” quoted from Mondale’s 2010 book, “The Good Fight”: “I believe that the values of the American people — our fundamental decency, our sense of justice and fairness, our love of freedom — are the country’s greatest assets, and that steering by their lodestar is the only true course forward.” 

Its back cover showed Mondale’s face next to the slogan, “We told the truth. We obeyed the law. We kept the peace,” which Klobuchar described as being memorialized after the then-vice president said them at the end of the Carter administration. 

Mondale was a graduate of the University of Minnesota and its law school, which has a building named after him. During Sunday’s remembrance, Biden wiped his eyes as a performance of “Tomorrow” from the musical “Annie” played, and the service closed with the university’s marching band, which sent people away with the “Minnesota Rouser” fight song. 

Mondale followed a trail blazed by his political mentor, Hubert H. Humphrey, serving as Minnesota attorney general before replacing Humphrey in the Senate. He was Carter’s vice president from 1977 to 1981. 

Mondale also lost one of the most lopsided presidential elections ever, to Ronald Reagan in 1984. He carried only Minnesota and the District of Columbia after bluntly telling voters to expect a tax increase if he won. But he made history in that race by picking Rep. Geraldine Ferraro, of New York, as his running mate, becoming the first major-party nominee to put a woman on the ticket. 

Mondale remained an important Democratic voice for decades afterward, and went on to serve as ambassador to Japan under President Bill Clinton. In 2002, at 74, he was drafted to run for the Senate again after Sen. Paul Wellstone was killed in a plane crash shortly before the election. Mondale lost the abbreviated race to Republican Norm Coleman. 
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Biden Roasts Trump, GOP, Himself at Correspondents’ Dinner

The White House press corps’ annual gala returned Saturday night along with the roasting of Washington, the journalists who cover it and the man at the helm: President Joe Biden.

The White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, sidelined by the pandemic in 2020 and 2021, featured Biden as the first president in six years to accept an invitation. Donald Trump shunned the event while in office.

“Just imagine if my predecessor came to this dinner this year,” Biden told an audience of 2,600, among them journalists, government officials and celebrities. “Now that would really have been a real coup.”

The president took the opportunity to test out his comedic chops, making light of the criticism he has faced in his 18 months in office while taking aim at his predecessor, the Republican Party and the members of the press.

“I’m really excited to be here tonight with the only group of Americans with a lower approval rating than I have,” Biden said to the Hilton ballroom filled with members of the media.

Biden also made light of the “Let’s Go Brandon” slogan, which has become the right’s stand-in for swearing at the president.

“Republicans seem to support one fella, some guy named Brandon,” Biden said, causing an uproar of laughter among the crowd. “He’s having a really good year. I’m happy for him.”

As far as roasting the GOP, he said, “There’s nothing I can say about the GOP that Kevin McCarthy hasn’t already put on tape.”

In addition to speeches from Biden and comedian Trevor Noah, the hourslong event had taped comedic skits that included late-night TV hosts, comedians and even Biden himself.

“Thank you for having me here,” Noah said to Biden. “And I was a little confused on why me, but then I was told that you get your highest approval ratings when a biracial African guy is standing next to you.”

While most of the speech was filled with cutting jabs, Biden did make note of the important role journalism plays in American democracy, especially in the last decade.

“I mean this from the bottom of my heart, that you, the free press, matter more than you ever did in the last century,” he said. “You are the guardians of the truth.”

The dinner had other serious moments, with tributes to pioneer journalists of color, aspiring student reporters as well as a dedication to the journalists detained, injured or killed during the coverage of the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The premier event for news media in Washington, the correspondents’ dinner mixed Washington journalists like CNN’s Jake Tapper and MSNBC’s Joy-Ann Reid with celebrities Kim Kardashian, Pete Davidson, Brooke Shields, Caitlyn Jenner, Drew Barrymore and Martha Stewart. Among the large swath of government officials and other prominent figures was Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

Accompanied by the first lady, the president came to the event while trying to strike a careful balance with the nation fatigued by the pandemic yet facing an uptick in infections. The ongoing national threat has struck closer to home for the president: Vice President Kamala Harris tested positive this past week and Dr. Anthony Fauci skipped the dinner for health precautions.

The U.S. was experiencing a COVID-19 case spike from a highly contagious subvariant of omicron, with confirmed infections rising to about 44,000 per day, up from 26,000 a month ago. Still, virus deaths and hospitalizations were near, or at, pandemic lows, with the BA.2 variant proving less severe than earlier virus strains.

In the wake of the recent Gridiron Club press dinner in Washington, dozens of attendees, including members of Congress and of Biden’s Cabinet and journalists, tested positive for COVID-19. The White House Correspondents’ Association said it was requiring same-day antigen testing for its dinner attendees even before the Gridiron outbreak, then added a vaccination requirement.

Biden, 79, decided to pass up the meal but turn up later for the program. While he planned to be masked when not speaking, a maskless president greeted award winners on the dais and could be seen smiling broadly during the dinner program.

The correspondents’ dinner debuted in 1921. Three years later, Calvin Coolidge became the first president to attend, and all have since, except Trump. Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon opted not to attend every year of their presidencies, however, and Reagan, then recovering from an assassination attempt, missed the 1981 installment — but called in from Camp David.

“The thing I think this shows is the restoration to the health of the relationship,” Harold Holzer, author of the book The Presidents vs. The Press and the director of the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College in New York, said ahead of the dinner. “It’s still barbed, there are still tense moments. But that’s OK.”
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White House Correspondents Dinner Returns, With Biden Headlining

U.S. President Joe Biden will resume a Washington tradition by speaking at the White House Correspondents Association dinner on Saturday night, the first president to speak at the annual event since 2016.

After being canceled for two years due to COVID-19 pandemic and boycotted by Donald Trump during his presidency, the event returns with gusto this year, featuring remarks by comedian Trevor Noah.

More than 20 WHCA-related parties are being staged around Washington before and after the major event on Saturday night and several senior administration officials will attend as well as a smattering of celebrities from the entertainment world.

However, a recent rise in COVID-19 cases in Washington, in particular an outbreak at the journalists’ white-tie Gridiron dinner early in April, has brought an undercurrent of caution to the White House dinner.

Organizers are requiring every attendee be tested for the virus, and some top officials, including infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci, have dropped out.

The White House said Biden will take extra precautions at the event – skipping the dinner portion and attend only the speakers program, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on Wednesday. He may opt to wear a mask when he is not speaking.

Asked what Biden will tell the crowd, Psaki said, “I will lower expectations and say it’s not funny at all.”

In recent weeks, the president has mostly been unmasked at crowded White House events, but those events had lower attendance than Saturday’s dinner, which is expected to seat about 2,600 journalists, Washington officials and celebrities.  

The White House Correspondents Association was founded in 1914 and has held a dinner nearly every year since the first one in 1921 to celebrate the reporters who cover the presidency and raise money for scholarships.
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