Former President Donald Trump has once again created tensions within Trumpworld over a recent campaign endorsement.
This time, Trump’s backing of Alabama Senate hopeful Katie Britt has enraged allies, following the ex-president pulling his endorsement from Britt’s GOP primary challenger Rep. Mo Brooks.
“Katie Britt, on the other hand, is a fearless America First Warrior,” Trump wrote in a late Friday evening statement. “Katie is an Incredible Fighter for the people of Alabama.”
ADVERTISEMENT
Yet, that endorsement didn’t leave all of Trumpworld willing to back Britt.
“This is a gut punch,” Fox News host Mark Levin wrote on Trump’s Truth Social platform. “Very disappointing. Britt is a McConnell-supported RINO praised by the head of the Alabama Democrat Party. I hope Mo [Brooks] can pull it off. Lord knows we need his conservative voice and vote in the Senate.”
The Fox News host would later double down, calling Britt a “disaster” while citing an article from Breitbart that alleges the now Trump-backed candidate “surrounds herself” with “never Trumpers.”
Similarly, former Trump spokesperson Katrina Pierson shared that same article while blasting Trump, writing, “This Katie Britt? Of course, he did.”
It didn’t stop there.
Pro-Trump writer Ryan Girdusky responded to the Trump endorsement, tweeting, “Oh fuck off. Mo is the one.”
A Britt campaign spokesperson didn’t return The Daily Beast’s request for comment on Sunday afternoon.
Within Trump’s Friday night endorsement of Britt, the former president acknowledged the criticism of hardcore MAGA Republicans.
“The opposition says Katie is close to Mitch McConnell, but actually, she is not—in fact, she believes that McConnell put Mike Durant in the race to stop her, which is very possibly true,” Trump said of Durant, an Army veteran, who finished third in the initial primary race.
The endorsement of Britt comes at a critical time for both campaigns. The primary runoff is in less than two weeks after neither candidate could secure 50 percent of the vote in the primary race.
In April 2021, Trump endorsed Brooks, only to revoke the endorsement after Brooks urged Trump supporters to move on from claims that the 2020 election was “stolen.”
In his Friday statement, Trump accused Brooks, whom Britt is billing as a Republican establishment candidate, of going “woke” at his rally in Cullman, Alabama.
“Instead of denouncing the Voter Fraud in the Election, Mo lectured the crowd of 63,000 people, saying, ‘Put that behind you, put that behind you,’ meaning that, in effect, forget the Rigged Election and go on to the future,” Trump fumed. “His words caused me to withdraw my Endorsement, and Mo has been wanting it back ever since—but I cannot give it to him!”
Since the Trump statement, Brooks has fired back, claiming that Trump was “conned” by establishment Republican types, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
“This is weird: last time Donald Trump talked about Katie Britt, he said she was unqualified for the Senate,” Brooks said. “Donald Trump is the only man in American politics who could get conned by Mitch McConnell twice in an Alabama Senate race.”
This isn’t the first time Trumpworld has pushed back hard on an endorsement from Mar-a-Lago.
After Trump backed Dr. Mehmet Oz, Trumpworld allies had a meltdown over the former president supporting the Turkish-American TV star.
“Wait,” one pro-Trump pundit said. “Is there anything conservative about Dr. Oz?”
