When Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-MT) posted a photo of himself at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday night—a show of solidarity for former President Donald Trump’s first post-indictment rally—the tweet quickly spread among Republican political insiders.
It’s not that Rosendale isn’t the type to show up at such an event. Far from it—the two-term congressman has been a close ally of the former president, and Trump has personally visited Montana to campaign for Rosendale in the past.
But what got GOP tongues wagging was the sight of Rosendale at a Trump 2024 campaign event, posing with Republican lawmakers who are diehard backers of Trump’s presidential bid, and expressing solidarity with the former president—without actually having endorsed Trump’s campaign himself.
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Despite making the pilgrimage, Rosendale came away from the night without any facetime with the former president, according to an attendee close to Trump. A representative for Rosendale didn’t respond to a request for comment.
For those bizarre optics, Rosendale may have to thank the escalating civil war between two of the GOP’s biggest power centers—where the congressman finds himself awkwardly in the middle.
As he mulls a second run for U.S. Senate against Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT), Rosendale would be the preferred candidate of the Club For Growth, the powerful, big-money conservative political organization that has been a major player in GOP primaries in recent election cycles.
The Club, as it’s called in Beltway shorthand, used to work closely with Trump and his political operation. But since the two camps backed different candidates in the 2022 midterm primaries, their relationship has cratered. Trump has openly savaged the Club and its leadership; in turn, the Club has not-so-subtly signaled its opposition to Trump’s third White House bid.
Behind the scenes, the Club has been pressuring members of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus—of which Rosendale is a member—to not endorse Trump for president, according to a source who has spoken to multiple caucus members and their aides. Another Republican operative confirmed that account. Politico, meanwhile, reported last week that a “surprising number” of HFC members were “going quiet” about their support for Trump in 2024.
In response to questions from The Daily Beast, Club For Growth PAC president David McIntosh said it was “absolutely false” that his organization was pressuring candidates not to endorse Trump. “The only presidential candidate we have a problem with endorsing is Joe Biden,” he said.
After publication of this story, a spokesperson for the group disputed the premise and stated that they “would fund Rosendale if and when he endorses Trump and runs for Senate.”
But in GOP circles, there’s been an emerging understanding that a candidate’s endorsement of Trump may make it much harder to earn the Club’s endorsement in a contested primary.
For Republicans like Rosendale, it’s an impossible situation. The Club is a powerful backer: its network spent some $150 million in the 2022 election cycle to boost its candidates. Against better-known and better-funded potential rivals, like Rep. Ryan Zinke and wealthy businessman Tim Sheehy, Rosendale could face long odds without the Club’s help.
At the same time, with Trump’s hold on the GOP base looking secure, Rosendale’s failure to own the MAGA lane in deep red Montana could doom his bid anyway.
Ahead of a busy 2024 election cycle in which primaries will shape Republicans’ chances to hold the House and flip Senate seats in a number of key battlegrounds, Rosendale could be just the first Republican hopeful to find themselves stuck in a similar catch-22.
Some Republicans worry that the power struggle will only cause collateral damage that could contribute to more disappointing election results and needless feuding.
“Members of the House are so afraid of Trump turning on them, they are so afraid to step out of line, that they just go along with it,” a Republican strategist without a dog in the fight told The Daily Beast.
The Club using a window like Trump’s criminal indictment to put the squeeze on House conservatives just won’t cut it under the present incentive structure, the longtime operative added.
“They’re in a small district, generally speaking, and you can’t risk your reelection because you have this guy turn on you,” they said. “You just don’t have the power to go against him. It’s the fear-driven model.”
The Trump-Club separation has not proved ironclad, however.
On Wednesday, the Club endorsed Rep. Alex Mooney (R-WV) in his bid for Sen. Joe Manchin’s (D-WV) seat. Mooney, long a favorite of the group, quickly endorsed Trump’s 2024 campaign last November. The ex-president remains widely popular in West Virginia, and Mooney’s likely primary foe—Gov. Jim Justice, a Democrat up until a few years ago—is both disliked by the Club and close to Trump.
In Indiana, the Club backed Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN) almost immediately after he announced a run for the state’s soon-to-be open Senate seat in January. Last Friday, long after he had cleared the field and locked up the support of the Senate GOP’s campaign arm—making the Club’s support far less relevant—Banks announced his endorsement of Trump for president.
Some Republicans said they didn’t discern any big change in the Club’s posture toward Trump. “I went to Club about a month ago with a potential congressional candidate, and there wasn’t any pressure in the interview regarding Trump,” said a veteran GOP operative with ties to the group.
Still, the bad blood between Trumpworld and the Club has been obvious for some time—and appears to be getting worse.
Although the two camps worked closely toward shared objectives during his presidency, the MAGA movement was never quite a fit with the Club’s tea party-era fiscal orthodoxy. In 2016, the group heavily supported Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) in his presidential run.
Observers trace the current rift to last year’s Senate primary in Ohio, when the Club backed Josh Mandel and Trump backed J.D. Vance. After Vance won, the Club dumped millions toward defeating Trump-endorsed Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania to reportedly “get even” after Ohio.
Ultimately, Trump and McIntosh stopped speaking to each other. Just before Trump entered the presidential race on the heels of the disappointing 2022 midterms, the Club released polling it commissioned showing the ex-president losing to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in early state primaries.
When the Club snubbed Trump for its donor retreat in February, Trump posted an angry rant on his Truth Social platform, dubbing his one-time ally “the Club For NO Growth, an assemblage of political misfits, globalists, and losers.”
Publicly, McIntosh hasn’t attacked Trump so much as gently suggested the GOP should move on. “It’s time for a new standard bearer that believes and will fight for free-market principles,” he told Axios in late January.
With Trump’s de facto declaration of war, however, MAGA world has been all too happy to hold up Rosendale as a cautionary tale for remaining on the fence in a presidential primary fight that is quickly becoming personal.
One Trump-aligned consultant told The Daily Beast that Rosendale knows his “puppet masters” at the Club For Growth “won’t allow him to endorse Trump, and if he does, they won’t fund his Senate campaign.” The consultant argued Rosendale only came “crawling” back to Mar-a-Lago after pro-Trump figures called him out, “but he still hasn’t endorsed.”
Other Republicans simply don’t see the strategic wisdom in forcing candidates to pick sides. One national GOP consultant who works on congressional races said the Club’s antipathy toward Trump is “unwittingly setting up their candidates for failure, by leaving a huge opening for them to be outflanked on the right in primaries.”
Arguing that backing Trump remains the smartest move for candidates in the Club’s hard-right political lane, the consultant said “any candidate who wants to outflank the Club’s endorsed candidates on the right simply just needs to endorse Trump and run as the MAGA candidate against them.”
“It’s a bizarre strategy that could really screw over a lot of great conservative candidates,” they said.
