IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: NBC News: A Trump-McConnell power struggle creates landmines in GOP quest to retake Congress

NBC News: A Trump-McConnell power struggle creates landmines in GOP quest to retake Congress
By Alex Moe, Leigh Ann Caldwell and Sahil Kapur
April 22, 2021

Key Points:

• The Republican primaries for the 2022 midterms are fast becoming a battlefield for control of the party.

• Most presidents — particularly a defeated one-termer — slip quietly away and allow the highest-ranking elected officials in the party to take the reins. Not Donald Trump.

• After laying low in the months after he left office in January, Trump has in recent weeks increased his public presence. He has trashed Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell as a “son of a bitch,” endorsed primary challengers against sitting Republican members of Congress he deems disloyal and attempted to divert GOP fundraising away from the party and into his own political organizations.

• For congressional Republican leaders responsible for winning back the House and the Senate, the post-Trump landscape is becoming a treacherous minefield with no historical playbook to help them navigate it. The growing power struggle could have repercussions in the 2022 elections.

• Party officials recognize that Trump retains loyalty among the Republican base and that his endorsements carry weight. They fear he could anoint loyal but unelectable candidates in primaries, who then squander winnable seats. They also worry he may sabotage nominees he dislikes by withholding his endorsement, or by demotivating party voters with groundless claims about election fraud, like in the Georgia runoffs that gave Democrats Senate control.

• Trump’s antics are a distraction, senior members of the party say, and dilutes their message in a way that helps Democrats.

• Trump is attempting to tip the scales in select primaries.

• In the open Missouri Senate race, Kimberly Guilfoyle, who is dating the former president’s son Don Trump Jr., is the new “national chair” of Eric Greitens campaign. Greitens is a former governor who resigned in 2018 amid a scandal where he was accused of blackmailing a woman with whom he had an affair. Senate Republican campaign officials say Greitens could have a difficult time winning a general election in a state that should easily be won by a Republican.

• Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., who is also in charge of the Senate Republican campaign arm and has 2024 presidential ambitions himself, is trying to keep Trump in the fold. He recently appeared alongside Trump to give him an award — an honor that the NRSC created to give Trump.

• Dan Eberhart, a Republican donor and oil-and-gas executive, said that at the event where Trump attacked McConnell, several party donors he spoke to told him they left during Trump’s remarks and called it “giantly awkward” for 2022 candidates.

See also: POLITICO: Republicans pray for truce after Trump attacks on McConnell; The Hill: Trump’s early endorsements reveal GOP rift; CNN: Analysis: Donald Trump’s fingerprints are all over the 2022 Senate fight; CNN: Senate Republicans already have a Donald Trump problem; Washington Post: Trump inspired Republican Senate candidates create early tensions over direction of the party; New York Times: Republicans Fear Flawed Candidates Could Imperil Key Senate Seats; The Hill: Trump allies line up ahead of potentially bruising primaries. 

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