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“If I endorse a person, they win,” President Trump claimed last year. “With the Republican Party, it’s like 399-0. Think of that.”
As usual, Trump was lying. He lost himself in 2020, and when he endorses other people they often lose too. That’s been especially true of late.
Last week, for example, his pick for governor of extremely conservative Wyoming, Megan Degenfelder, lost by a brutal 15 points to a resolutely un-Trumpy candidate who rejected personal smears and attacks.
Earlier in the month, election denier and MyPillow founder Mike Lindell ran for Minnesota governor on a platform of the big lie and the Trump cult, including at one point boasting during a candidate forum that “I have an advantage over everyone up here. I can call up the president!”
But Minnesota Republican weren’t impressed. Lindell lost his bid by 11 points and then hilariously claimed the primary was stolen from him.
In fact, 10 candidates endorsed by Trump have now lost in this primary cycle. That’s as many Trump endorsees as lost in 2018, 2020, and 2024 combined. It’s only one shy of the Trump picks who lost in 2022.
Trump boasts about his primary wins, and wants you to forget his primary losses, because when you endorse and your candidate loses, it makes you look weak. And Trump is in fact weak and getting weaker.
The FiftyPlusOne aggregator has his approval at around 36 percent with 60 percent disapproving, which puts him 24 points underwater. An American Research Group poll pegged Trump’s approval at a dire 30 percent, his lowest number ever. Trump’s advisers are worried he’s going to sink into the 20s before the midterms.
These numbers are bad enough that they’re eroding Trump’s standing even with Republicans. The endorsement losses don’t just reflect his low approval, though — they also underline why it’s so low in the first place.
Trump loves corrupt sycophants and bounders because he is a corrupt sycophant and bounder. And, just maybe, the nation has had enough of rule by grotesquely evil fools who hate us.
No juice
Trump has racked up a string of embarrassing primary losses this season, and those losses have accelerated.
Six of his 10 failed endorsements came in the last two weeks. Three were last Tuesday, when Cory Mills and Catalina Lauf both lost House races in Florida and Degenfelder lost her bid for governor of Wyoming to state Sen. Eric Barlow.
The Wyoming race was not the only governor’s contest in which Trump picks have struggled — his endorsees also lost their gubernatorial contests in Iowa, Georgia, South Carolina, Minnesota, and Wyoming. Two other Trump picks lost House races in Minnesota and Tennessee, and Trump’s attorney general selection went down to defeat in Texas.
These developments demonstrate the limits of Trump’s hold over the party and its voters. The House loss in Michigan’s 8th district is a particularly stark example of Trump’s dwindling influence. In hopes of winning the R+2 district, Trump endorsed and rallied with Amir Hassan, an African American veteran with experience in federal law enforcement.
Hassan had solid fundraising and seemed poised to win easily. But while he is Christian, his name led racist Islamophobic Republican voters to reject him; he was crushed by double digits by Thomas Smith. Smith had dropped out of the race, but his name signaled Christian whiteness to voters, who considered that more important than the endorsement of a president whose standing has been sinking for months.
Trump’s loss in the Wyoming governor’s race was an even clearer indication of his waning influence. Degenfelder is a rabid right-wing culture warrior and bigot who centered her campaign on bashing trans people and the left. Barlow, in contrast, touted his support for public lands — a progressive position that is popular among Wyoming hunters — and promised to solve more problems and lob fewer partisan grenades.
Barlow’s victory was part of a wave of MAGA losses in Wyoming, where the legislature’s freedom caucus was decimated in primaries in both the House (losing 13 seats) and Senate (losing 6). Another nine freedom caucus-aligned candidates lost when they challenged incumbent Republicans — none in fact won. That rebuke followed corruption scandals and an extremely unpopular effort to sharply cut funding for the University of Wyoming.
Wyoming remains very conservative. But it seems clear that it is sick of Trump-aligned far-right policies and/or powerfully unhappy with incumbents. Given that environment, it’s possible Trump’s endorsement of Degenfelder not only didn’t help the cause but actively damaged her.
Trump’s personal unpopularity can be an anchor. So can his policies. Trump has embraced positions like support for data centers, tariffs, and his Iran War, all of which are increasingly unpopular even with Republicans.
Trump endorsees have tried to navigate these issues with various degrees of finesse. Lindell, for example, said he supported data centers that don’t involve “corporate welfare or secrecy deals that loot Minnesota’s resources for Big Tech cronies,” distancing himself from Trump’s position. On Iran, however, he was all in, declaring that the war was a “spiritual battle of evil and good.”
That bobbing and weaving did the Pillow Man no good though — if you’re running as a Trump sycophant, people reasonably conclude that you’re going to sycophant all down the line.
Losing losers
Trump is unpopular; his policies are unpopular. But his endorsements also failed in many cases because he chose weak and grotesque candidates.
Rep. Cory Mills is a fine example. He is reportedly under investigation by the Department of Justice for campaign finance violations and sexual misconduct; the House Ethics Committee is investigating too. Weeks before the primary, Mills refused to deny dating a 19-year-old while in Congress, insisting there was “nothing illegal” about doing so.
Mills hoped that constantly touting his Trump endorsement would overcome these scandals, but Florida Republicans worried he would cost them the R+13 seat. That’s why many of them — including Mills’s House colleagues Anna Paulina Luna and Mike Haridopolos — endorsed his Republican opponent Ryan Elijah, citing Mills’s lack of character.
Trump himself seems to have lost faith — he left Mills off a list of final endorsements in Florida in an effort to distance himself. Trump didn’t actually rescind his endorsement though, and he didn’t repudiate Mills or call for him to drop out. That means that Mills’s 12 point loss to Elijah is Trump’s loss as well.
Lindell’s failed bid for Minnesota governor is another case in point. The founder of MyPillow has been one of the nation’s most indefatigable election deniers who is not named Trump. He’s been ordered to pay millions in restitution because of his lies, which have been repeatedly rejected by the courts.
In gratitude for his attacks on democracy, Trump enthusiastically and repeatedly endorsed Lindell, who was registered to vote in Texas, not Minnesota. Tragicomically, after losing decisively to Minnesota House Speaker Lisa Demuth, Lindell did not accept the results, claiming nebulous voting irregularities. He’s demanding ballots be hand-counted which will cost $825,000. Trump has been silent as Lindell attacks his own party and possibly damages Demuth in the general election.
And there’s more. In the Oklahoma governor’s race, Trump has endorsed former Oklahoma state Sen. Mike Mazzei. Like Lindell and Mills, Mazzei seems very much not ready for primetime. In a recent debate, he mocked the moderator for a verbal stumble, and then awkwardly laughed to himself at a joke. The Oklahoma primary is next week, and perhaps Mazzei will win. But also he may lose because he comes across as mean, unfit, and weird, much like the president who endorsed him.
It’s important to underline that even when Trump’s endorsees win their primaries, they often create major headaches for the party. Most notoriously, Trump endorsed the almost unbelievably corrupt Ken Paxton over incumbent Sen. John Cornyn; as a result Democrat James Talarico is currently narrowly leading in the polls for a seat that could end up being a huge loss for Trump’s party.
Trump also refused to withdraw support from Ohio Rep. Max Miller, who has been accused of physically abusing his toddler daughter and his ex-wife, herself the daughter of Ohio Sen. Bernie Moreno. The deadline for choosing a different Republican candidate for the seat has passed; polls show Miller losing by double digits in a seat that Trump won by 11 in 2024.
Trump is bad at this
Miller and Paxton and Lindell and Mills are all bad candidates on their own merits. They are the kind of scandal-ridden, incompetent self-dealing scumbags who most politicians don’t want to be associated with.
Party leaders usually try to be careful with their endorsements because if the candidate loses, the reputation of the endorser suffers. Presidents in particular have historically almost never endorsed in primaries. That’s both because they don’t want to be associated with losers and because they want to avoid looking like partisan factional hacks.
Trump, however, has no such compunction. He lies to himself as assiduously as he lies to others and therefore doesn’t seem able to consider the personal downsides of his actions, whether it’s fomenting a violent coup, attacking Iran, or endorsing Ken Paxton. Trump simply wades into any and every contest with flatulent assurance, endorsing anyone who most shamelessly flatters him. Not surprisingly, the candidates who are most shameless in praising Trump are candidates who are most shameless. And so Trump repeatedly finds himself blessing scoundrels, abusers, and liars — his own people, in other words.
Trump endorses as he governs — with reckless, narcissistic lack of concern for the consequences to the country, his party, or even really to himself. That’s why he keeps losing, in primaries as in all things. He remains his own worst enemy. With any luck his electoral stumbling in the primaries presages a historic comeuppance for his party in November.
That’s it for today
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🤞🏼🤞🏼🤞🏼🤞🏼An endorsement from 47 is the kiss of death, it would seem. I love it❣️There’s a limit, and perhaps he has reached it.
I'm especially struck by the results in Michigan's 8th District. Your analysis seems spot-on: Amir Hassan checks the right boxes -- veteran, law-enforcement experience -- but Republican primary voters rejected him even though his opponent had dropped out. His being African American was probably a liability, but the big one has to have been his Arabic name. Abdul El-Sayed's campaign and Michigan Democrats in general probably aren't counting on Republican crossover votes in the U.S. Senate race, but the "independent" ranks surely include plenty of Islamophobes and free-range bigots so I hope they're keeping that in mind.