If you've been paying attention to the primaries this week, you understand that Donald Trump
suffered two major losses. Of course, the biggest one being Charles. Herter a man that
Donald Trump not only endorsed for the G O P nomination for Nebraska's gubernatorial
race, not just endorsed him, showed up, did a rally for him. Recently, Donald Trump Jr.
Appeared in a video with the guy and he lost. It was a spectacular loss. Of course, all
of the abuse allegations against him didn't, uh, help his campaign at all. But Donald Trump
stuck by him. Didn't unin endorse went and did the rally, even after the allegations
and Trump lost. And that was a very big test for him. But Republicans have been quick to
point out this week after Donald Trump's humiliating defeat, that he is in fact had a very good
track record with endorsements, this primary cycle so far.
And as I have always said, you know, based on a study that came out last year, Donald
Trump's endorsement is typically statistically a kiss of death. And in most instances, a
candidate that is polling over 50% will drop below 50% following a Donald Trump endorsement.
His success rate when averaged out between house and Senate races was only 47%, which
meant 53% of the time the endorsed candidate lost. Well, those numbers shifted a little
bit this year because yes, Donald Trump has in fact been picking some winners, but how
real is it? Well, luckily the good folks at Newsweek decided to actually look at what's
really happening. And they found out that Donald Trump's endorsement victories, if you
want to call them, that is nothing more than an illusion with the exception, of course,
of JD Vance, who JD Vance was actually in third place in his race.
I think at one point I had actually said in a video that he was already in the lead when
Trump endorsed him, uh, I was wrong about that. I was looking at the wrong dates. Uh,
JD Vance was in third place when Trump endorsed him and then shot up to first place and of
course won as primary. So that is a victory for Donald Trump. Absolutely. Well, here's
the thing as noted by data compiled by Newsweek. Trump has already endorsed more than 80 incumbents
who rarely lose primaries during this campaign cycle compared to just 44 in 2018. Uh, it
should be noted how often Trump picks candidates who were either already favorites to win their
elections or even ran uncontested. And in fact, on the day that he lost with Herter,
he endorsed nine other people who of course were all incumbents in their races. And as
Newsweek points out, it's rare for incumbents to lose their primaries. So the vast majority
of Trump's endorsements
Have been of people who already hold office and they're already in the lead in the polls.
So when they win, Trump gets to say, Ahaha, look another victory for me, there's a notch
in my bed post, I guess that's probably a bad analogy, but you know what I'm saying?
He gets to say, I endorsed a winner. Okay. But that person was already headed to victory
without your endorsement. They were pulling ahead. It's like, you're looking at the super
bowl, Tom. Brady's already got 30 points up on the other team with two minutes left in
the game. And you're like, you know what? I'm gonna put some money on Tom Brady. I think,
I think he's the best person out there. He he's basically already won you putting money
on it at that point means nothing. And it certainly doesn't change the outcome. That's
what we're seeing with a lot of these races, not to mention, I think the big one, the uncontested
races, Donald Trump goes out there finds somebody who's running for office.
That's literally running against nobody and says, you know what? I'm gonna endorse this
person, this person with no opponents who literally cannot lose their race. And then
he counts that as a victory. That folks is why I say that these endorsement victories
are nothing more than an illusion. There are wins that would've happened. Most of them,
JD Vance is the obvious exception, but there're wins that would've happened with, or without
Donald Trump, he's just tacking his name on at the end of it so that he can, you know,
increase his batting average there a little bit and get above that 47% to make himself
appear to be a king maker. When in reality, he's already picking people that we're gonna,
you know, get a home, run in these races to begin with that, that that's not strategy.
That's stacking
the deck.