Former President Trump is reportedly considering revoking his endorsement of Rep. Mo Brooks’ (R-AL) for Senate and backing one his primary rivals instead as the incumbent GOP congressman struggles in the polls.
Lackluster polling is one thing — but Trump also said he was not thrilled with Brooks for telling voters it’s time to move on from the 2020 presidential election, a hill Trump will likely die on.
“Mo Brooks is disappointing,” Trump told the Washington Examiner in a phone interview from Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday evening. “I’m determining right now, has Mo Brooks — has he changed?”
Trump endorsed Brooks last year to replace retiring Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL). Brooks thus far has failed to demonstrate strong support in recent polls, signaling he could fall to one of his Republican rivals: Katie Britt, Shelby’s former chief of staff, or Mike Durant, a businessman and military veteran.
Regardless, the former president seems to have gone cold on Brooks, telling the Examiner he has a particular bone to pick with the congressman.
Trump reportedly has doubts about his initial endorsement of Brooks, a flip-flop that follows the GOP congressman urging voters at a Trump rally last year to stop feeling “despondent” about 2020 and “look forward” to 2022 and 2024. Trump apparently took offense, as Brooks has remained an ardent pusher of the Big Lie of a “stolen” 2020 election for some time. Trump suggested his support for the congressman may be at risk if Brooks’ position on 2020 has truly changed.
“I’m disappointed that he gave an inarticulate answer, and I’ll have to find out what he means,” Trump said, referring to Brooks’ remarks at his rally in Alabama last year. “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.”
The mercurial former president did, however, indicate the relationship has not completely soured, saying he still thinks Brooks is a believer.
“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 told the Examiner.
Trump added that he is “not particularly happy” with the “very tight race” between Brooks and his two primary rivals.
Despite Trump’s threat, the GOP congressman did clarify his Big Lie stance (to, let’s be honest, an audience of one) after the supposedly confusing remarks at Trump’s Alabama rally last year.
(Peep Brooks’ Twitter name below ?)
Brooks was among Trump’s allies who spoke at the “Stop the Steal” rally that preceded the deadly Capitol insurrection last year.
“Today is the day American patriots start taking down names and kicking ass,” Brooks said at the rally last year.
Brooks was also one of the first Republicans to baselessly blame the amorphous “antifa” for the insurrection — in order to justify why he wore body armor during his speech to the crowd of Trump supporters at the rally. Brooks claimed that wearing body armor to the rally was his wife’s idea.
“I had no information of any threats, by anybody, but from socialists, generally, Antifa and BLM in particular,” Brooks told CNN in July.
