Trump followers became losers

By Tom Maertens

After another failed election, will Republicans figure out that ex-president Donald Trump is a loser?

Most of the high-profile candidates he endorsed, principally election deniers, lost. He has further damaged his “brand” by publicly calling for the Constitution to be “terminated” and the election rerun. He later asserted that the press made that claim up, but it was in writing on his Truth Social site. His response was typical: “Well, I think if they win, I should get all the credit,” he said. “And if they lose, I should not be blamed at all, OK.” (CNBC)

One more Democratic senator will make Majority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer’s life a lot easier, giving Democrats the chairmanship of the Senate committees and subpoena power and facilitating the confirmation process.

The losers included Trump’s handpicked Senate candidate in Pennsylvania, Dr. Mehmet Oz. In Michigan, it included Trump’s gubernatorial candidate, Tudor Dixon and her secretary of state candidate, Kristina Karama, as Democrats, led by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer ran the table.

Trump’s candidates in Arizona, Kari Lake for governor and Blake Masters for the Senate, lost to Katie Hobbs and Mark Kelly respectively. Lake is following the Trump playbook of claiming a rigged election.

Among the most dangerous of his candidates was Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania, who traveled to Washington, D.C., for the Jan. 6 insurrection and virtually promised to “fix” the next election by appointing a secretary of state who would follow his instructions. He lost the governor’s race to former Attorney General Josh Shapiro.

Don Bolduc lost to Sen. Maggie Hassan in New Hampshire; he repeated the crackpot story that kids were being told they could identify as anthropomorphic cats and use litter boxes in school.

Trump cost Republicans the two Georgia Senate seats in 2020 when he told his followers not to vote because the election was “rigged.” Not surprisingly, two Democrats were elected to the U.S. Senate; one, Raphael Warnock, in a special election fill out the remaining two years of retiring Senator Johnny Isakson’s term.

The latest loser is Herschel Walker in Georgia who lost to Warnock in the general election for a full six-year term. Walker had played for Trump in the defunct U.S. Football League, and asserted that Trump begged him to run for months.

Walker had multiple millstones around his neck: a track record of violence against women, several unclaimed children, and a number of women who claimed he pressured them to have abortions while he was running on an anti-abortion platform.

Like Trump, he appears to be a compulsive liar — although, to refresh, the Washington Post data base contains 30,573 lies that Trump told in his four years in the White House, making Walker look like an amateur.

Like Trump, Walker has made multiple easily disproven fabrications, which The New York Times and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution fact checked: Walker never owned the largest upholstery company in the country, or, in fact, any upholstery company at all; he did not graduate in the top 1% of his class at the University of Georgia, and has not graduated from Georgia or any other university; he did not attend the FBI academy and was never an FBI agent or a cop as he has claimed.

Rather he was given an honorary deputy badge from the Cobb County police. He falsely claimed to have founded at least two veterans charities.

The New York Times attempted to verify his claims that he made contributions to many other charities; none of the charities he named has any recollection of him donating anything. He also claimed his grandmother was a full-blooded Cherokee, but his mother wouldn’t confirm that.

Trump’s cult following is mostly impervious to unpleasant facts, however, including the bizarre comments Walker made about his preference for being a werewolf rather than a vampire.

On the “bad news” front, the Jan. 6 committee is sending criminal referrals to the Department of Justice; odds are high that Trump’s name will be among them. But that’s only the beginning of his problems, some of which were detailed in a My View of Nov. 14.

Since then, Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed career prosecutor Jack Smith as special counsel to oversee the criminal investigations into Trump’s retaining government documents at Mar-a-Lago, and investigate parts of the Jan. 6 insurrection. Adding to Trump’s peril, an appeals court has overruled the court order appointing a special master to curate those classified documents, which was principally a delaying tactic by Trump.

Smith has already issued subpoenas to officials in Arizona, Wisconsin and Michigan over their efforts to convene fake slates of electors to certify Trump’s “victory” in the last election.

Tom Maertens served in the White House under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.