Congressman Mo Brooks, R-Alabama, asked former President Donald Trump to consider re-endorsing his campaign for U.S. Senate over the weekend, according to a message posted Sunday to the candidate’s Twitter account.
The move comes just over a week after Brooks’ appeared on Fox News Sunday and defended, during a discussion with Fox anchor Sandra Smith, claims of election fraud during the 2020 presidential election, which pleased the former president and former members of the Trump administration, according to Politico.
Brooks, the first sitting congressman to announce his intentions to vote against the ratification of the 2020 election results, had previously distanced himself from defending the unsubstantiated claims of election malfeasances in the wake of Trump’s electoral defeat. The pivot angered Trump and his supporters, nearly getting Brooks booed off a stage in Cullman during Trump’s rally in the city last year.
“MAGA nation, join me in asking President Trump to #ReEndorseMo!” Brooks said in the message posted to Twitter Sunday. “I am the MAGA candidate. I am the Trump candidate,” Brook said later in the message Sunday.
On March 23, the former president withdrew his endorsement of Brooks for Senate after weeks of speculation that Brooks’ abrupt pivot away from unfounded claims of election fraud and misconduct during the 2020 election would land the candidate outside of the Trump orbit. However, the withdrawal has not prevented Brooks from using the endorsement, with campaign mailers bearing the “Complete and Total Endorsement” of the former president on the envelope arriving in would-be voter mailboxes across the state after Trump publicly withdrew his endorsement.
“I think President Trump knew what he was doing,” Brooks said in the statement posted to Twitter. “He gave our campaign the kick in the pants we needed. He was like a football coach, grabbing us by the face mask, and getting us in gear. Part of me wonders if he also knew that in pulling his endorsement, he’d bait ol’Mitch [McConnell] into thinking we couldn’t win and get Mitch to stop attacking us.”
Brooks is referring to a super PAC affiliated with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, along with many of his Republican allies in the Senate, that donated $2 million dollars to the Alabama’s Future PAC, a separate pro-Britt super PAC which emerged from the Alabama Conservatives Fund and has busily spent millions running ads against the congressman’s candidacy during the Senate race.
In March, Brooks alleged Trump pulled his endorsement due to manipulation by the former Senate Majority Leader. In the same release in March, Brooks said that the former president asked him to “rescind” the results of the 2020 election and call a special election to decide the presidency.
Brooks is currently locked into an intense run-off for the Republican nomination for Senate with fellow Republican candidate Katie Britt.
The run-off is scheduled for June. 21.
