Trumptastrophe: After Walker’s Flop, Former President Goes 2 Out of 14 for His Endorsed Candidates in Swing States Biden Won

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Ouch. With Herschel Walker’s failure to unseat Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) in their runoff battle, former President Donald Trump’s report card for the midterm elections is complete with an abysmal 2-14 record in swing states won by President Joe Biden.

Walker sailed to an easy primary win due to his popularity from his football career at the University of Georgia and the NFL, and boosted by Trump’s endorsement, but was dragged down by a seemingly endless parade of gaffes and scandals. Walker vastly underperformed other Georgia Republicans, like Gov. Brian Kemp (R) and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R), who both won their races with a solid margin.

Warnock, first elected in a Jan. 2020 special election, had a narrow lead in this November’s general election, but did not pass the 50% + 1 threshold needed to avoid a runoff (a libertarian candidate captured a small percentage of the vote). Tuesday’s runoff makes it official, sending Warnock back to the Senate for his first full six-year term.

NBC News political reporter Allan Smith tallied up Trump’s record for his endorsed candidates for three statewide races — governor, U.S. Senate, and secretary of state — in swing states won by Biden.

Among Trump’s flopped gubernatorial picks were David Perdue, who launched an anemic primary challenge against Kemp in the Georgia GOP primary at the former president’s urging after Kemp refused to get onboard with Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud, and Kari Lake, the former television anchor who was one of the loudest backers of Trump’s election denialism and was defeated by Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, the target of many of these baseless claims.

Trump’s four rejected secretary of state candidates all bought into his election denialism to various degrees, as did many of his Senate endorsees, although some attempted to walk it back to moderate for the general (and New Hampshire candidate Don Bolduc walked back his walk back, but I digress).

The meltdown of the MAGA candidates at the ballot box is a significant part of the failure of the “red wave” to materialize, flipping a longstanding trend for presidents to watch their parties lose seats in midterms, as Inside Election’s Jacob Rubashkin pointed out.

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