- Missouri Senate candidate Eric Greitens is trying to win Trump's support by attacking McConnell.
- Greitens is mounting a political comeback four years after a scandal led to him resigning as governor.
- Politico reports that Trump is intrigued by Greitens' anti-McConnell stance and his strong poll numbers.
Controversial Missouri Senate candidate Eric Greitens is working to earn President Donald Trump's support by attacking one of Trump's most prominent foes: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
Politico recently reported that Greitens, the former governor who was forced to resign amid multiple scandals in 2018 and is now mounting a political comeback, is heavily playing up his staunch opposition to McConnell to curry favor with Trump's base and maybe earn an endorsement from Trump himself.
Politico reported an anecdote from the recent Conservative Political Action Conference in Florida, when a Trump friend offered Greitens tickets to a private Trump event at Mar-a-Lago if Greitens tweeted a message opposing McConnell.
Greitens easily obliged, tweeting: "I was the first person in the country who said that when I'm in the Senate, I'm voting for new leadership. No More RINOs. I'm not voting for Mitch McConnell," and got the tickets.
Trump, and his chief spokeswoman Liz Harrington, also recently promoted a Breitbart op-ed by Greitens calling for new Senate leadership and arguing that McConnell, who Greitens calls "the power merchant of DC," "has lost touch with our conservative movement" and "has also lost his fight." The former president, who broke with McConnell over the 2020 election, now frequently publicly bashes McConnell as a "RINO" (Republican In Name Only) and a "Broken Old Crow."
Trump has still not endorsed a candidate in the crowded August 2 primary to replace retiring Sen. Roy Blunt. The other primary candidates are Attorney General Eric Schmitt, Reps. Vicky Hartzler and Billy Long, Missouri Senate President Dave Schatz, and Mark McCloskey, the St. Louis lawyer who gained a national profile for brandishing an AR-15 at Black Lives Matter protesters in 2020.
Some Republicans fear that Greitens, who resigned from office after being accused of sexual misconduct, could divide Republicans in the primary and imperil the GOP ticket in the general election. But, as Politico noted, no organized anti-Greitens effort has coalesced yet around a single candidate in the race.
A number of people in Trump's orbit are allied with different candidates. Trump 2020 campaign surrogate (and Donald Trump Jr.'s fiancée) Kimberly Guilfoyle is on Greitens' team, Trump's former top aide Kellyanne Conway is advising Long, and Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley has endorsed Hartzler and urged Trump to support her, Politico reported.
Trump is also intrigued by Greitens' strong polling numbers, which he cited when influential conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt all but begged Trump not to back Greitens in a December 2021 radio interview.
"Please don't, please don't endorse Eric Greitens. That's a nightmare, Mr. President," Hewitt said. "We'll lose that seat. But that's Hugh Hewitt's opinion, not yours."
"Well, that's an interesting opinion, that's true," Trump responded. "He's right now leading by quite a bit."
It looks like Trump isn't fully sold yet.
Politico Playbook reported in mid-February that Trump, who has publicly defended himself and other powerful men against allegations of sexual harassment or assault, is nonetheless repelled by the allegations of sexual abuse that led ot Greitens' resignation from office. Politico reported that Trump wondered out loud to one person: "What kind of guy ties a woman up in the basement against her will?"
A hairdresser with whom Greitens had an extramarital affair accused him of forcing her into sex acts, choking her, tying her up in a basement, and taking sexually explicit photos without her consent in order to blackmail her, a form of digital sexual exploitation. Greitens acknowledged having the affair but consistently denied that he had taken nonconsensual photos, blackmailed, or physically abused the woman.
Greitens was indicted on a felony count of invasion of privacy over one of the alleged photos and a separate count of tampering with a computer in 2018 in connection to improperly accessing a nonprofit donor list for use in his campaign. But prosecutors eventually dropped both charges, and Greitens resigned from office before the legislature could impeach him.
Despite some Republicans' fears, whoever wins the GOP nomination for Senate has a strong chance of winning statewide in Missouri, which has grown more solidly Republican over the past decade and voted for Trump by over 15 points in 2020.
And while Greitens' presence in the Senate could cause headaches for Senate leaders and the GOP, him posing a direct challenge to McConnell specifically is an appealing prospect for Trump.
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