Joe Scarborough believes Donald Trump’s election triumph has given him the upper hand in choosing the new Republican leader in the U.S. Senate.
Giving props to the president-elect, the Morning Joe host said his wins across the swing states were in stark contrast to a string of GOP congressional losses.
He was speaking after Democrat Ruben Gallego was elected as Arizona’s first Latino senator, beating Republican Kari Lake.
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The GOP still has 53 seats in the 100-member Senate, but Scarborough said party leaders would have to bow to Trump, who won Arizona and beat Kamala Harris in the other crucial battleground states where his colleagues on Capitol Hill struggled.
After hearing Gallego declared the winner over Lake, the MSNBC anchor said: “If you‘re Donald Trump this morning and you’re seeing this news, this just seems to strengthen your hand with Republicans in the organizing caucus going, ’Listen, you guys can’t win these (men) and women, you can’t win these swing states.’
“’You lost in Michigan, you lost in Wisconsin, you lost in North Carolina, (the) gubernatorial race. You lost in Arizona, you lost in Nevada – I won all of those states.’ It seems to me as he organizes Republicans and he starts saying this is who you should pick as your majority leader and this is what you should do in the House, it seems to me it only strengthens Donald Trump’s hand.”
MAGA supporters are not big fans of John Thune (R-SD), one of the three realistic candidates for the majority leader job in the Senate, and Trump could test his power by telling the party he wants him out of the contest.
If that happened, it would be a head-to-head battle between Rick Scott (R-FL) and John Cornyn (R-TX).
Scarborough said Trump’s swing state victories will likely give him leverage.
“No doubt about it,” he said, adding, “and you look at Arizona, it is fascinating – like seven-point swing between Donald Trump’s five-point victory and Ruben Gallego, right now, two-point victory.
“So much it has to do with the candidate. He’s the first Hispanic senator in the state of Arizona, he’s a veteran. Hispanic men voted for him in much higher numbers than they voted for Kamala Harris, so a lot of different things going on.”
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