When CNN, Fox News and The Iowa Standard all note the oddities surrounding President Donald J. Trump’s endorsement of U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley, it becomes obvious to everyone the endorsement is more a shotgun marriage than anything to do with political principles.
At Saturday’s rally in Des Moines, Trump offered his endorsement of Grassley, who is facing a primary challenge from State Sen. Jim Carlin. Grassley accepted the endorsement, saying he would be a fool not to considering Trump has a 91 percent favorability rating with Iowa Republicans.
It was a line he repeated multiple times and certainly wasn’t something that made anyone think he was genuinely appreciative of Trump’s endorsement. In fact, if you search through Grassley’s Twitter account, as of 4 p.m. on Tuesday, there is still not a single word about him being endorsed by Trump.
We’ve detailed it all before, but we’ll offer a cliff notes version:
*Grassley voted to certify the election results;
*Grassley essentially called Mike Lindell a liar;
*Grassley said he saw little opportunity for Trump to lead the GOP;
*Grassley said he was looking forward to what Joe Biden’s agenda would be;
*Grassley lambasted Trump saying “the reality is, he lost;”
*Grassley said Trump “belittled and harassed elected officials across the country to get his way;”
*Grassley criticized Trump for encouraging his “loyal vice president, Mike Pence, to take extraordinary and unconstitutional actions during the Electoral College count;
*Grassley voted for the infrastructure bill, which Trump called “destructive” and hinted at primary challengers for those GOP Senators who voted for the bill;
*Grassley is still advocating for passage of that infrastructure bill, noting the fact that President Joe Biden “needs a win.”
All of those things are indisputably true. And the reality is Trump’s endorsement of Grassley undermined much of what Trump said on Saturday night. That wasn’t lost on many in attendance. But we’ll write more about that later.
Fox News highlighted the fact that Trump’s endorsement of Grassley and Grassley’s acceptance “stands in contrast of what (Grassley) said at the beginning of the year in the aftermath of Trump’s unsuccessful attempts to overturn now-President Biden’s 2020 election victory and the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol by right-wing extremists and other Trump supporters aiming to disrupt congressional certification of Biden’s Electoral College victory.”
Then Fox News shared this past statement from Grassley:
“The reality is, he lost. He brought over 60 lawsuits and lost all but one of them. He belittled and harassed elected officials across the country to get his way. He encouraged his own, loyal vice president, Mike Pence, to take extraordinary and unconstitutional actions during the Electoral College count.”
CNN was even more aggressive:
“Craven ambition, total hypocrisy — what Chuck Grassley said after January 6th was even worse than what you just quoted. He accused Donald Trump of belittling and harassing elected officials across the country to get his way and accused the President of extreme, aggressive and irresponsible behavior. And there is accepting his endorsement because Donald Trump is popular in his state.
“At the age of 88, he has decided to run for re-election. This is someone who was in the Capitol that day and had to hide from the insurrectionists. This is someone who should know better. This is someone who throughout his political career has been on the side of whistleblowers and the other day he said that Donald Trump did absolutely nothing wrong in his office on Jan. 3 when he was trying to pressure the Department of Justice to fix the election. Something has happened with Chuck Grassley and he wants to get re-elected and he knows Donald Trump can help him get there in Iowa.”
