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Deep-Red GOP Leader Compares Trump Rallies to ‘Freak Show’

A former Kansas governor scoffed at the president’s last-minute stop in Wichita to prop up a vulnerable Repubican senator.

One of deep-red Kansas’ most prominent Republicans thinks Donald Trump’s rallies are pure carnival.

Bill Graves, 73, former Kansas governor, appeared on CNN’s Erin Burnett OutFront on Tuesday to react to the president’s pit stop in Wichita, Kansas. Trump, 80, was there to campaign for Republican Sen. Roger Marshall two weeks before Election Day.

Burnett asked Graves whether undecided rallygoers, like those CNN’s Betsy Klein spoke to, could still be won over.

Graves looked unimpressed.

“Going to a Trump rally is kind of like going to the freak show at the carnival,” he said. “What’s he going to say? What’s he going to do? It’s always very entertaining.”

“But whether or not it translates into increased voter turnout on behalf of Roger Marshall is, in my opinion, yet to be seen and hard to be believed,” he added.

Burnett also noted that Adam Hamilton, the Democratic Senate candidate and founding pastor of the nation’s largest United Methodist church, had told CNN he was glad Trump came because it showed Republicans “needed to send the most powerful man in the country to try to save Roger Marshall.”

Graves led Kansas as a Republican from 1995 to 2003. Last month, Graves broke with his party to endorse Hamilton. Graves wrote in a Kansas City Star op-ed that Marshall “has turned his back on Kansas.” He has since told GOP voters, “It’s OK to cross party lines,” in the race.

Graves saved his sharpest words for Marshall, opening the interview with Burnett by saying Trump’s visit showed “what [an] incredibly poor job Roger Marshall has done as an incumbent United States senator.”

“I have yet to understand what platform he is running for re-election on,” he said.

Burnett then showed a clip of Trump praising the 66-year-old before the trip, calling him “one of the finest people in government” and “a great senator.”

Graves took a red-hot crack at why Trump likes Marshall so much.

“The president thinks he’s a nice guy because he says yes every time the president [asks] him to do something,” he said.

“The president loves Roger Marshall because he’s abdicated any responsibility to be a check on President Trump.”

Burnett noted that Trump carried Kansas by 16 points in 2024 and asked whether that margin might be impossible to overcome. Graves conceded that a Democratic Senate win in Kansas is “probably not probable.”

“But in this instance, it is possible,” he said. “We have the right candidate. He has the right message.”

Kansans last sent a Democrat to the Senate in 1932. Recent polling by RealClearPolitics has shown a near-tie, and the Cook Political Report downgraded Marshall’s outlook from “Solid” to “Likely Republican.”

Marshall has also faced fallout from a New York Times report that he and his medical practice sued more than 700 patients over unpaid bills during his years as an obstetrician, some for as little as $101, typically tacking on 18 percent interest.

Many of the patients lived in a rural county with above-average poverty and uninsured rates, and some were new mothers with bills from their deliveries. In 81 of those cases, patients were arrested after missing court dates. A Marshall spokeswoman told the Times that “judges issue warrants when people repeatedly miss court dates, not doctors.”

The Daily Beast has contacted the White House and Marshall’s campaign for comment.

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Briana CharlesReporter

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