EXCLUSIVE — Former President Donald Trump is unhappy with Rep. Mo Brooks, the Republican he endorsed for Senate in Alabama, and is mulling a switch to primary rivals Katie Britt or Mike Durant.
“Mo Brooks is disappointing,” Trump told the Washington Examiner Tuesday evening during a wide-ranging telephone interview from Mar-a-Lago, his private social club and political headquarters in Palm Beach, Florida. “I’m determining right now, has Mo Brooks — has he changed?”
Trump endorsed Brooks last spring, making him the instant front-runner in the race to succeed retiring Republican Sen. Richard Shelby. But Brooks has since struggled to find his footing, and recent polls suggest he could fall to Britt, Shelby’s former chief of staff, or Durant, a businessman and military veteran. Political weakness is all it takes for Trump to rethink his endorsement. But the former president is apparently reconsidering his support for Brooks for another reason.
Nearly seven months after Brooks urged voters at a Trump rally in Alabama to stop feeling “despondent” about 2020 and “look forward” to 2022 and 2024, the former president said he has lingering doubts about backing the congressman. Trump said he endorsed Brooks because the congressman shared both his view that the 2020 election was stolen and a commitment to uncover how it happened. If Brooks’s position has changed, Trump said, so might his support.
“I’m disappointed that he gave an inarticulate answer, and I’ll have to find out what he means,” Trump said, referring to Brooks’s remarks at his rally in Alabama last August. “If it meant what he sounded like, I would have no problem changing [my endorsement] because when you endorse somebody, you endorse somebody based on principle. If he changed that principle, I would have no problem doing that.”
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Brooks’s bona fides on this matter should be unimpeachable.
The congressman spoke at Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021, where he said, regarding the vote that day to certify President Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory: “Today is the day American patriots start taking down names and kicking ass.” And just in case there was any misunderstanding about where Brooks stood after the August 2021 Alabama rally, he sought to clarify his views on Twitter.
“The 2020 election was fraught with voter fraud & election theft on a massive scale,” Brooks tweeted. “I support audits of state 2020 election results, & I eagerly await their findings.”
If all of these comments are insufficient to allay Trump’s concerns, it could be what is driving the former president to consider yanking his endorsement of Brooks is that his candidate could lose in a Republican primary in Alabama, possibly the most pro-Trump of red states. Indeed, Trump said during his conversation with the Washington Examiner that he does not really believe Brooks has changed his stripes.
“I endorsed him because he felt strongly about election fraud. And he still does. But he was inarticulate in the way he said it,” Trump said.
So, it might simply be that polling shows Brooks facing turbulence. In a March 10–13 survey for the Alabama Forestry Association conducted by the Republican firm McLaughlin & Associates, Durant led the field with 33.8%, with Britt close behind at 32%. Brooks was in third and trailing badly, with 17.6%. More than 16.5% of GOP primary voters were undecided. On the bright side for the congressman, only 49.4% of respondents were aware of Trump’s endorsement.
But combine these rough poll numbers with Brooks’s reputation among Republican insiders for being a poor campaigner, and Trump could be looking for greener political pastures to protect his stellar endorsement record and political capital.
“It’s a very tight race between the three of them right now, and I’m not particularly happy,” Trump said.
Brooks is not the only Republican Trump has endorsed who appears to be in trouble in a high-profile primary in which the former president’s credibility as a powerful GOP kingmaker is on the line.
For instance, in Georgia, former Sen. David Perdue is running behind incumbent Gov. Brian Kemp in the gubernatorial primary. And, in North Carolina, Rep. Ted Budd is in trouble in the Senate primary against former Gov. Pat McCrory; both are battling for the nomination in the race to succeed retiring Republican Sen. Richard Burr.
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The former president acknowledged that Perdue and Budd could lose but expressed confidence that both were positioned to finish on top in their May primaries.
“David’s running, and it’s a little bit early yet. He’s a little bit behind because most people don’t know I endorsed him,” Trump said. “Ted Budd is an outstanding person. He’s loved by, especially, the conservative wing of the party — highly respected guy.”
Meanwhile, Trump said he is planning to endorse in Senate primaries in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Missouri, where he said scandal-plagued former Gov. Eric Greitens is still in the running for his seal of approval, something Republican insiders in Washington, D.C., and the Show-Me State will be disappointed to hear.
