Trump cares nothing for the party, only himself:
You may have heard about this:
Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) and his wife were indicted last week on conspiracy and bribery charges. The Justice Department alleged that Cuellar took nearly $600,000 in bribes from an Azerbaijani government-controlled oil company and a Mexican bank. In return, prosecutors allege that Cuellar agreed to “influence U.S. foreign policy in favor of Azerbaijan” and advance the bank’s interests in the U.S., per the indictment.
You would think that would make Trump very happy and he’d be calling for Cuellar to resign immediately in order to help the GOP congress maintain their at least a two vote margin. (They only have one at the moment.)
But no.
Trump’s rare defense of a vulnerable Democratic lawmaker runs counter to Republicans’ desire to pressure Democrats to call for Cuellar’s removal. The National Republican Congressional Committee plans to accuse Democrats of a double standard if they stay mum on Cuellar following their pressure on ex-Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) to resign, Politico reports.
Cuellar, who has denied wrongdoing, said that he still plans to run for re-election. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Trump endorse him.
As Dave Weigel observes, the “law and order candidate” has a big soft spot for crooked politicians — except his rivals, of course (who aren’t actually criminals.)
Since Feb. 2020, when Trump commuted the sentence of disgraced former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, the Republican presidential nominee has shown support and empathy for Democrats convicted or charged with public corruption.
Days before he left office, Trump commuted the sentence of former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick; now a resident of Georgia, Kilpatrick attended a Trump rally in Michigan last week. He considered pardoning the late former New York legislative leader Sheldon Silver, then in prison on corruption charges, and only stopped after an overwhelming backlash from state Republicans. In September, Trump called last year’s indictment of New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez an “attack” by Biden, “because he wasn’t getting along too well with the Democrats.”
And over the weekend, Trump welcomed Blagojevich to donor events in Palm Beach, Fla., where the self-proclaimed “Trumpocrat” shared a stage with potential Trump running mates and got singled out for praise in a speech first reported on by the New York Times. Trump repeated an argument he’d made for years about Blagojevich: He had the right enemies.
“A lot of people thought it was unfair,” Trump said in Aug. 2019, when he was considering commuting most of the 14-year sentence Blagojevich got after soliciting bribes for a U.S. Senate appointment. “And it was the same gang, the Comey gang and all these sleazebags, that did it.
He’s not a party man. He’s a Trump man and he sees any politician accused of crimes as a mirror of himself — obviously innocent and railroaded by the Deep State — unless they are opposed to him personally. He’s a criminal and he relates to other criminals.