Former President Donald Trump continues to rage with the top Republicans who have criticized him, though some advisers insist he should target President Joe Biden and Democratic leaders, according to people familiar with the issue.
Senator John Thune, Republican no. 2 in the Senate, and longtime political operative Karl Rove, are one of the targets of Trump’s anger, these people said.
These people rejected his name so that he could speak freely.
Trump spokesman Jason Miller responded to CNBC’s request to comment on the story by e-mail: “False news. We are focused on getting the House and Senate back in 2022.”
CNBC had asked which Republicans Trump intended to target during the midterm primaries after the former president said he plans to support several primary candidates to support his Make America Great Again agenda.
There are currently 20 Republican seats in the Senate, including four that are not running, that will run for office in 2022. Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski is the only one of the seven Republicans who voted to condemn Trump in his second dismissal. test for re-election next year. The whole house is also at stake.
Trump’s anger against Republicans who have criticized him was made public in his statement, alleging Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., Whom Trump called a “political pirate.” sad, moody and without a smile “.
Trump’s statements came after McConnell, even after voting to acquit the former president in his second impeachment trial, said Trump was responsible for the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riot. Trump said in response that he plans to support primary candidates in the 2022 midterm elections to run with him.
Advisers have informed Trump that many Republican voters, who have been polled by the former president’s strategists, do not want to see a full-scale war in the Republican Party. Instead, they prefer to see Trump focus his attacks on Biden and top Democrats.
Sen. Rick Scott, chairman of the Republican National Senate Committee, has told associates he wants to convince McConnell to commit to Trump so the two can resolve their differences before the interim periods, according to a GOP adviser. Sen. Lindsey Graham, RS.C., is reportedly scheduled to meet with Trump this weekend at his Mar-a-Lago resort to try to act as a peacemaker.
Chris Hartline, a spokesman for the NRSC, told CNBC that Scott “is not involved in mediating anything. He focuses on the future and recovers the Senate. He spends every day raising money and talking about the importance of saving this country. the madness of the Democrats towards socialism and the loss of freedom and prosperity. “
“I don’t know if he’s talked to the leader recently, but we’re not talking about private conversations he had with other senators,” Hartline added.
McConnell and Scott’s representatives did not return requests for comment.
Still, Trump’s allies are not far from the idea that support for his agenda will help Republicans in the primaries.
“When you know you have the muscle of President Trump behind you, and all the loyal devotees of the president, and even as important or more important, his first policies in the United States, it will be hard to overcome,” Roy said Bailey, a Texas businessman and former head of Trump Victory, a joint fundraising committee between the campaign and the Republican National Committee, told CNBC.
Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., A staunch supporter of Trump in Congress, has tweeted that Republicans will be rejected by the party base if they do not accept the former president’s agenda. Gaetz has called for the expulsion of Republican House Speaker Liz Cheney R-Wyo.
Rove has become the main Republican critic of Trump, and the former president is not happy about that, one person said. Rove, a former senior adviser to former President George W. Bush, wrote a recent paper in the Wall Street Journal defending his longtime ally McConnell and holding the former president directly responsible for Senate runoff Georgie.
“Mr. Trump lost those Georgia seats by making campaign appearances there not about the need to control the balances of the Biden administration, but about his anger at losing the presidential election,” Rove wrote Wednesday.
Trump is also angry with Thune, who will be re-elected next year, another person said. As for Thune, the South Dakota Republican voted with Trump more than 90 percent of the time, according to data from FiveThirtyEight. But he has also been a vocal critic of Trump regarding the Capitol Hill insurgency.
Trump had warned in December that Thune would face a major challenge after the senator said efforts to challenge the results of the Electoral College “would fall like a dog” in the Senate.
However, the Cook Political Report has Thune’s career as a “solid Republican.”
After voting to acquit the president, Thune said, “What former President Trump did to undermine faith in our electoral system and disrupt the peaceful transfer of power is inexcusable.”
Thune criticized Republican activists in a recent interview with the Associated Press. He said these activists have pledged to “cancel the culture,” rushing to censor Republican lawmakers who voted in favor of Trump’s ouster.
Thune, according to the AP, said he plans to help candidates “who don’t come out and talk about conspiracies and that sort of thing.”
“At the grassroots level, there are a lot of people who want to see Trump-like candidates,” he said. “But I think we will look for eligible candidates.”