ORLANDO — The head of the House campaign arm said Monday he won’t try to sideline former President Donald Trump ahead of the 2022 midterm elections and instead plans to promote his accomplishments during his term in office.
“The president can play whatever role he wants,” Rep. Tom Emmer, who leads the National Republican Congressional Committee, said during an interview at the GOP issues retreat in Florida. “We are not going to tell him, one way or the other, what to do. I think that is a mistake.”
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Instead, Emmer said, the House campaign arm will tout the achievements from the Trump administration.
“I think you can go out there and celebrate the policies,” Emmer said. “Lower taxes, the lowest unemployment prior to the pandemic for women, for Hispanics, for black Americans. All the great things that they were doing before the pandemic hit,” as well as credit for developing the vaccine and initiating the economic recovery that has continued during the Biden administration.
“There are a lot of things that Republicans can be out there celebrating with the former president and on their own, so I don’t see any problem with that whatsoever,” Emmer said.
Emmer, a Minnesota Republican, is optimistic the GOP will regain the majority in the 2022 midterm elections. The party needs only a handful of seats to win back control of the House.
Trump’s Save America PAC has $85 million on hand, enough to have a significant effect on the 2022 races, depending on how he wishes to allocate the funding.
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Rep. Steve Scalise, the House minority whip from Louisiana and a strong Trump ally, said the former president told him he is worried about the future of the country under a Democratic-led Congress and plans to help GOP candidates win.
“When I’ve talked to him, he’s very concerned about which direction the economy is going to go, and what’s happening to a lot of the energy jobs that have already been lost and what other industries are gonna be next,” Scalise said. “And he wants to help us get the House back.”
