Don Blankenship, West Virginia’s controversial Republican Senate candidate, on Monday dismissed President Trump’s call to vote for any other Republican but him in the GOP primary Tuesday, and predicted he would still win even without Trump’s support.
“We still expect to win, quite handily,” Blankenship said in an hour-long paid spot on WZTS in Monday morning.
Trump urged Republican voters to vote for either of Blankenship’s two GOP opponents, and said Blankenship is unelectable in a state-wide election. Trump cited Alabama’s Roy Moore as an example of Republicans voting for a controversial candidate, and then watching him lose to his Democratic opponent in the general election.
But Blankenship rejected Trump’s call to “remember Alabama,” and reminded voters that Trump supported Moore.
“We all really like President Trump’s policies, but we know he doesn’t get things right,” Blankenship said. “He recommended that people vote for a guy that was basically accused of pedophilia in Alabama, and my accuser is Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. It’s not anyone that I’ve damaged.”
Republicans fear Blankenship, the coal baron who was recently released from prison, could keep Republicans from picking up a Senate seat because of his comments about Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s “China family,” a reference to his wife, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao. But Blankenship blamed Trump’s staff for spreading “misinformation.”
“It’s really sad the pressure on the president and the misinformation and the untruths that he’s been given would suggest that you vote for two guys that have failed you,” Blankenship said.
The multimillionaire coal executive repeatedly said that he believes Trump is being “misinformed” by Republicans in Washington to support Rep. Evan Jenkins or state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey in Tuesday’s primary, which has turned into one of the nastiest races in the 2018 cycle.
Blankenship responded to Trump’s tweet earlier Monday by calling himself “Trumpier than Trump,” which he repeated throughout the infomercial.
Blankenship also took a page out of Trump’s 2016 playbook and said the “establishment” and the media lies about the true U.S. unemployment rate. He said that multinational corporations and those “beholden” to them are a “great risk to the American worker.”
“That’s the reason they lie to you about what the unemployment rate is. The unemployment rate is probably 10 percent, not under four percent,” Blankenship said.
