Trump endorses McCormick for Pennsylvania Senate despite problematic past.

On Saturday, former President Donald Trump urged his Pennsylvania followers to “go out and vote for him” in one of the year's most contentious Senate battles.  

Two years after helping McCormick lose Pennsylvania's Senate GOP primary, Trump endorsed him, creating an uneasy situation between the two men who would share the ticket in a crucial state for White House and Senate control.  

The man is good. Trump remarked at a rally in Schnecksville, eastern Pennsylvania, that he wants to run a good ship. “He’s smart. He was successful. He sacrificed a lot for this.”  

The event was skipped by McCormick, who lives in Connecticut. He spent a parents' weekend with his daughter, a campaign official said. McCormick wrote on X: “Thank you, President Trump! We will win big for Pennsylvania and America in November.”  

McCormick, the former CEO of Bridgewater Associates, is challenging Pennsylvania's most famous politician, Democratic Sen. Bob Casey, who is seeking his fourth term. Many Senate battleground Republican hopefuls had embraced Trump early in the GOP presidential primaries, campaigned for him, or sought his approval.  

Trump was the only major Republican candidate for the 2024 candidacy after Nikki Haley suspended her campaign after her Super Tuesday losses, leaving McCormick to endorse him.  

McCormick sought Trump's endorsement in 2022 as part of the seven-way GOP contest to succeed retiring Sen. Pat Toomey. In their discussion at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, Trump told McCormick he had to pretend the 2020 election was stolen to win the primary.

He declined, McCormick said. Trump embraced Dr. Mehmet Oz three days later and slammed McCormick on the campaign road. At a speech in western Pennsylvania days before the 2022 primary, Trump said McCormick is “not MAGA,” his Make America Great Again campaign motto.  

He called McCormick “the candidate of special interests and globalists and the Washington establishment” after characterizing him as having worked for a hedge fund that “managed money for communist China.”  

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