Trump Endorses NH Sen Candidate Don Bolduc After Taking a Swipe at Him for Waffling on Election Denialism
Photo by Scott Eisen/Getty Images.
To win former President Donald Trump’s endorsement, Republican candidates are expected to exhibit devotion to two things: the ex-president himself and his baseless claims of election fraud. New Hampshire GOP candidate Don Bolduc might have wavered on the second one, but remained steadfast on the first, and has now reaped his reward — but not without Trump taking a swipe at him for waffling.
Bolduc was a vocal proponent of various conspiracy theories that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump throughout the primary, but then backtracked after he won the GOP primary, going so far as to say on Fox News, “The election was not stolen.” His explanation was that he wanted to “move us forward to 2022 and 2024.”
His flip-flop helped secure the endorsement of New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu (R), who had previously denounced Bolduc as a “‘conspiracy theory extremist who’s not a serious candidate.”
Sununu’s willingness to overlook Bolduc’s previous tin foil hattery — including claiming Bill Gates was putting microchips in the Covid-19 vaccines and attacking the governor as a “Chinese communist sympathizer” and “globalist world government guy” — was soon rewarded by Bolduc re-embracing his past election fraud claims.
Last week, Bolduc debated incumbent Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH) and resurrected old and unfounded claims about people being bussed into New Hampshire to vote illegally. (Bolduc also repeated the debunked claim that students were identifying as cats and using litter boxes in school bathrooms at a campaign event last Thursday, but that’s diving down a whole different rabbit hole of conspiracy theories.)
Bolduc’s renewed devotion to the Big Lie was noticed by Trump, who posted an endorsement of him shortly before 3 am ET Monday morning. Trump praised Bolduc as being a “strong and proud ‘Election Denier'” and declared that was why he had won his primary. Trump swiped at him for having “disavowed” his election denialism but noted he had “since come back.”
Screenshot via Truth Social.
Wrote Trump:
General Don Bolduc has run a great campaign to be the U.S. Senator from the beautiful State of New Hampshire. He was a strong and proud “Election Denier,” a big reason that he won the Nomination, but he then disavowed. He has since come back, at least on busing, but that is only a small part of N.H. Election Fraud. Nevertheless, Don Bolduc has asked for my Endorsement, and he’s got it, Complete & Total. His opponent is a disaster on Crime, the Border, Inflation, & all else. Vote for Don Bolduc!
Bolduc tweeted multiple times Monday morning, but so far did not mention Trump’s endorsement. Whether that’s because the former president’s post expressly identified Bolduc as a “strong and proud Election Denier” or because it smacked at him for backtracking, remains to be seen.
