Former Missouri governor Eric Greitens keeps getting questions on the campaign trail about the state of his relationship with former president Donald Trump.
But the scandal-scarred Senate candidate, who is trying to run under the banner of Trump’s “America First” movement, always finds a way to avoid a direct answer.
“We are honored to have so many of Donald Trump’s strongest fighters on our team,” Greitens said last month in one interview on a conservative podcast when asked about the relationship.
The dodge glosses over one of the most dramatic behind-the-scenes battles for Trump’s favor taking place right now. The former president has hosted a steady stream of potential candidates, sitting senators and political kibitzers who have tried to keep him from endorsing Greitens, a devoted cheerleader who is trying to use Trump’s grass-roots strength to emerge from disastrous allegations of bound hands and coercive sex that forced his resignation as governor in 2018. Trump advisers aware of the meetings spoke on the condition of anonymity to reflect private conversations.
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Few candidates have done more in recent months to court Trump, or to compare his own controversy to the scandals that enveloped the former president. Yet in a state that Trump won by 15 points in 2020, the Greitens campaign has tested the question of just how far the former president and Republican voters are willing to go to overlook past misdeeds.
Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who is leading the Senate GOP campaign effort, is among those encouraging Trump to stay out of the primary in Missouri and elsewhere.
Several Republican strategists say they worry that the lurid scandals that brought down Greitens would create an opening for a Democrats if he is the nominee, especially if former governor Jay Nixon (D) decides to run. More likely, they say, Greitens would just increase the costs for Republicans to win the state, diverting resources from other contests.
“I keep saying to the president: We want to nominate electable people. I think he’s trying to find the most Trumpian person who is electable,” said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), who recently traveled to Trump’s Bedminster resort in New Jersey and said it was “an encouraging sign” for Republican chances to take over the Senate that the former president was, for now, staying out of some races. “A lot of people on the ground are encouraging him to stay out. They are saying don’t put Missouri in play.”
But the efforts by Greitens to win the endorsement and the support of Trump’s most devoted followers have not abated. Greitens has hired a coterie of former Trump aides, and won the endorsement of former Trump attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani and former New York police commissioner Bernard Kerik, whom Trump pardoned after a guilty plea for tax fraud and lying to the government. Former interior secretary Ryan Zinke, former White House aides Boris Epshteyn and Sebastian Gorka and several others from Trump’s orbit have signed on to the effort.
The campaign has hired Trump’s former pollster, Tony Fabrizio, who produced a March survey that showed Greitens leading the crowded field. Kimberly Guilfoyle, a former Trump campaign aide and the girlfriend of his son Donald Jr., has been hired to chair the Greitens campaign.
“Gov. Greitens has unparalleled support among the MAGA base and beyond in ruby-red Missouri,” campaign adviser Epshteyn said in a statement, citing campaign event turnout and small-dollar donation numbers. “That support is evidenced in polling by President Trump’s pollster which shows Greitens annihilating all the other candidates.”
Greitens has also gone all in on Trump’s false claims of election fraud, even embracing the idea that a new ballot count in Arizona and other states could lead to President Biden being replaced by Trump before the next presidential election.
“If they don’t have the ballots in Arizona, they don’t have the victory,” Greitens said during a June appearance on another conservative podcast, a comment that goes beyond the position taken by his rivals in the Senate contest, who have also expressed concern about the fairness of the presidential election but left more fantastical predictions alone.
Stephen K. Bannon, the former Trump adviser who has taken a leading role in spreading falsehoods about the last election, has heaped praise on Greitens for saying that Biden’s electors may have to be decertified if the private Republican ballot audit in Arizona finds a different result.
“Eric Greitens said the quiet part out loud,” Bannon said in a June 11 broadcast on his show, after Greitens made his statement.
Such public displays of fealty to Trump’s false claims have not yet proved enough to win any official blessing, say people who have spoken to Trump. The former president has instead expressed frustration to others that Guilfoyle signed on to the Greitens campaign before he took a position on the race. She also serves as a finance chair for Make America Great Again Action, a Trump-backed super PAC.
Two people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe their private conversations with Trump said he was not likely to endorse soon.
“He is kind of nowhere on the race,” one of them said. “He talks about all of the candidates without indicating any kind of a decision.”
Some of Trump’s advisers have encouraged him to scale back endorsement meetings and to wait until next year to make some of the decisions, if he makes them at all. They also are urging him to pick Republicans who are expected to have easy wins in 2022, so he can buttress his win-loss record.
Trump advisers have interviewed several candidates for the U.S. House race in Wyoming — hoping to settle on one to back against Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), who angered Trump by her criticism of him and his efforts to overthrow the election. Trump will interview at least three candidates soon, advisers said.
“You have to pick someone who can win,” one of the Trump advisers said of the Missouri race. “The worst thing in the world for him would be to dilute the power of his endorsement.”
One concern is that Trump not get too far out ahead of his own voters, as he did in the 2017 Senate primary in Alabama, when he endorsed and campaigned for the state’s appointed senator, Luther Strange, despite many in his movement backing the ultimate Republican primary winner, former state judge Roy Moore. Moore would go on to lose the general election amid news reports that he had as an adult attempted sexual encounters with young girls.
But the scandal-scarred Senate candidate, who is trying to run under the banner of Trump’s “America First” movement, always finds a way to avoid a direct answer.
“We are honored to have so many of Donald Trump’s strongest fighters on our team,” Greitens said last month in one interview on a conservative podcast when asked about the relationship.
The dodge glosses over one of the most dramatic behind-the-scenes battles for Trump’s favor taking place right now. The former president has hosted a steady stream of potential candidates, sitting senators and political kibitzers who have tried to keep him from endorsing Greitens, a devoted cheerleader who is trying to use Trump’s grass-roots strength to emerge from disastrous allegations of bound hands and coercive sex that forced his resignation as governor in 2018. Trump advisers aware of the meetings spoke on the condition of anonymity to reflect private conversations.
ADVERTISING
Few candidates have done more in recent months to court Trump, or to compare his own controversy to the scandals that enveloped the former president. Yet in a state that Trump won by 15 points in 2020, the Greitens campaign has tested the question of just how far the former president and Republican voters are willing to go to overlook past misdeeds.
Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who is leading the Senate GOP campaign effort, is among those encouraging Trump to stay out of the primary in Missouri and elsewhere.
Several Republican strategists say they worry that the lurid scandals that brought down Greitens would create an opening for a Democrats if he is the nominee, especially if former governor Jay Nixon (D) decides to run. More likely, they say, Greitens would just increase the costs for Republicans to win the state, diverting resources from other contests.
“I keep saying to the president: We want to nominate electable people. I think he’s trying to find the most Trumpian person who is electable,” said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), who recently traveled to Trump’s Bedminster resort in New Jersey and said it was “an encouraging sign” for Republican chances to take over the Senate that the former president was, for now, staying out of some races. “A lot of people on the ground are encouraging him to stay out. They are saying don’t put Missouri in play.”
But the efforts by Greitens to win the endorsement and the support of Trump’s most devoted followers have not abated. Greitens has hired a coterie of former Trump aides, and won the endorsement of former Trump attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani and former New York police commissioner Bernard Kerik, whom Trump pardoned after a guilty plea for tax fraud and lying to the government. Former interior secretary Ryan Zinke, former White House aides Boris Epshteyn and Sebastian Gorka and several others from Trump’s orbit have signed on to the effort.
The campaign has hired Trump’s former pollster, Tony Fabrizio, who produced a March survey that showed Greitens leading the crowded field. Kimberly Guilfoyle, a former Trump campaign aide and the girlfriend of his son Donald Jr., has been hired to chair the Greitens campaign.
“Gov. Greitens has unparalleled support among the MAGA base and beyond in ruby-red Missouri,” campaign adviser Epshteyn said in a statement, citing campaign event turnout and small-dollar donation numbers. “That support is evidenced in polling by President Trump’s pollster which shows Greitens annihilating all the other candidates.”
Greitens has also gone all in on Trump’s false claims of election fraud, even embracing the idea that a new ballot count in Arizona and other states could lead to President Biden being replaced by Trump before the next presidential election.
“If they don’t have the ballots in Arizona, they don’t have the victory,” Greitens said during a June appearance on another conservative podcast, a comment that goes beyond the position taken by his rivals in the Senate contest, who have also expressed concern about the fairness of the presidential election but left more fantastical predictions alone.
Stephen K. Bannon, the former Trump adviser who has taken a leading role in spreading falsehoods about the last election, has heaped praise on Greitens for saying that Biden’s electors may have to be decertified if the private Republican ballot audit in Arizona finds a different result.
“Eric Greitens said the quiet part out loud,” Bannon said in a June 11 broadcast on his show, after Greitens made his statement.
Such public displays of fealty to Trump’s false claims have not yet proved enough to win any official blessing, say people who have spoken to Trump. The former president has instead expressed frustration to others that Guilfoyle signed on to the Greitens campaign before he took a position on the race. She also serves as a finance chair for Make America Great Again Action, a Trump-backed super PAC.
Two people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe their private conversations with Trump said he was not likely to endorse soon.
“He is kind of nowhere on the race,” one of them said. “He talks about all of the candidates without indicating any kind of a decision.”
Some of Trump’s advisers have encouraged him to scale back endorsement meetings and to wait until next year to make some of the decisions, if he makes them at all. They also are urging him to pick Republicans who are expected to have easy wins in 2022, so he can buttress his win-loss record.
Trump advisers have interviewed several candidates for the U.S. House race in Wyoming — hoping to settle on one to back against Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), who angered Trump by her criticism of him and his efforts to overthrow the election. Trump will interview at least three candidates soon, advisers said.
“You have to pick someone who can win,” one of the Trump advisers said of the Missouri race. “The worst thing in the world for him would be to dilute the power of his endorsement.”
One concern is that Trump not get too far out ahead of his own voters, as he did in the 2017 Senate primary in Alabama, when he endorsed and campaigned for the state’s appointed senator, Luther Strange, despite many in his movement backing the ultimate Republican primary winner, former state judge Roy Moore. Moore would go on to lose the general election amid news reports that he had as an adult attempted sexual encounters with young girls.
