Why Trump Loves Rick Scott (But Maybe Not Enough to Endorse Him)
Why Trump Loves Rick Scott (But Maybe Not Enough to Endorse Him)
The president-elect is not sure if his fellow Florida Man can win the race for Senate leader. So, for now, he’s staying mum.
DONALD TRUMP HAS PRIVATELY TOLD confidants that he wants fellow Florida Man Rick Scott to be the next Republican leader of the U.S. Senate. But one nagging question has held him back from endorsing the senator publicly.
“Can Rick win?” Trump has asked advisers whom he’s informally polled.
The answer, so far, has come back as a “probably not,” according to those insiders who relayed his remarks and thinking to The Bulwark.
Scott is currently in a three-way contest with Sens. John Cornyn and John Thune to replace Mitch McConnell atop the GOP conference. Cornyn has the most history in the chamber and Thune may be the best positioned to win the private ballot vote.
But the MAGA sect has fallen fully behind Scott, a longstanding loyalist who regularly butters up the former-and-future president and who shares Trump’s anti-establishment bona fides. He has pledged to run the Senate in accordance with Trump’s wishes, a contrast with McConnell’s more independent style.
To pressure senators and help persuade Trump to come out with an endorsement, some top allies and advisers have launched a pressure campaign on Scott’s behalf. But for now, at least, Trump insiders expect him to remain on the sidelines.
A formal endorsement could help boost Scott’s chances, though Politico reports that some zealous Trump supporters may have gone so over the top it could backfire.
Even if Scott doesn’t win the job, Trump world believes that his bid for the post has paid dividends. A few muted voices at Mar-a-Lago believe Scott’s bid has leveraged Thune and Cornyn into supporting Trump’s biggest ask: the willingness to use recess appointments to fill the executive branch with the president’s nominees. Trump posted the demand on his Truth Social media platform at 2:18 p.m. on Sunday. Nine minutes later, Scott said he agreed “100%.” It took Thune about two hours to bend the knee, followed by Cornyn.
“Three days ago, recess appointments like Trump is calling for would have been considered a human rights violation in the Senate. Now they just folded,” one Trump adviser involved in the Senate race discussions said on condition of anonymity.
“Rick has served a real purpose. Even if he doesn’t win, he’s our favorite backup quarterback,” the adviser said. “But Trump might just decide to back Rick anyway and say ‘Fuck it. I’m the leader of this party. I don’t have to worry about Senate leadership making my life hell. They need to worry about me making their life hell.’”
Trump’s approach to Senate leadership fights is clouded, in part, by his relationship with McConnell, who has sometimes proved oppositional to Trump during his time running the Senate conference.
McConnell is relinquishing his post. And with Trump’s dominant win Tuesday, top MAGA influencers (Elon Musk, Tucker Carlson, Charlie Kirk, Rep. Matt Gaetz, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.) moved quickly to use their leverage in the normally secretive insider process of selecting a new Senate leader.
The MAGAville insiders have alternately questioned Thune’s trustworthiness and dredged up his 2016 call for Trump to withdraw from his first presidential race after his crude comments, caught on an Access Hollywood hot mic, were released. They also noted that during this year’s primary, when asked if he’d support Trump as the GOP nominee, Thune dodged the question and said he was “hoping . . . we have other options.”
Thune’s past opposition to Trump, however, could prove to be a plus in a Senate where members still pride themselves on a measure of independence—of being the proverbial saucer that cools the tea. Scott, elected governor of Florida as a political newcomer in the 2010 Tea Party wave, has had little use for taking down the temperature. He also hasn’t built close relationships in the Senate and became estranged from colleagues for the way he ran the National Republican Senatorial Committee in 2022. The cycle was a disappointment for the party and some blame was put on Scott for issuing a conservative policy plan that called for deep spending cuts, including to Social Security and Medicare.
Even so, Scott decided to challenge McConnell last year for leader. And though he lost, he endeared himself to the MAGA movement.
Over the weekend, backing Scott as “the only candidate who agrees with Donald Trump,” Tucker Carlson bashed Cornyn as an “angry liberal”:
TRUMP HAS HAD A FEW CONVERSATIONS with senators about the race, but sources say he’s more immersed in plans for his transition than he is in that contest. Vice President-elect JD Vance, who’s still serving as Ohio’s senator, is acting as Trump’s ancillary eyes and ears in the chamber and counting votes.
“JD’s talking to everyone,” said a Republican insider who has discussed the matter with Vance. “If JD thought Sen. Scott had this, you would have seen Trump post his support by now.”
Trump’s campaign manager-turned chief of staff, Susie Wiles, is a Scott ally and helped mastermind his first, successful run for governor. She is said to be supportive of Scott, but is not occupied with the Senate race.
Winning is one of the most important things for Trump. But loyalty isn’t far behind. Nor is the appetite for revenge against perceived adversaries. Scott checks those latter two boxes with bright MAGA-red X’s.
His hostile relationship with McConnell is a plus for Trump. So is the fact that Scott has been a trusted ally, going so far as to invent a special “Champion for Freedom Award” he presented to Trump on April 12, 2021. That was just three months after January 6th, a low point in Trump’s political career.
Scott’s relationship with Trump antedates politics, stretching back decades to when he led the Columbia/HCA hospital chain and Trump was still a New York City celebrity developer.
The alliance between the two was so close that, when Scott was governor in 2016, he almost violated his pledge to not get involved in Republican primaries. At the time, two sons of Florida—Sen. Marco Rubio and former Gov. Jeb Bush—were running against Trump, then a political newcomer. Scott had promised to stay neutral. So, instead, he issued a non-endorsement endorsement of Trump on January 6, 2016 in USA Today.
“Donald Trump has America’s pulse,” read the headline of Scott’s op-ed, which was published a month before the Iowa caucus.
Rubio and Bush were blindsided. And that thrilled Trump almost as much as the words Scott wrote: “I won the governor’s race in 2010 and many outsiders—some of them business people—continue to shock the political establishment by coming into elected office from careers outside of politics. . . . Our next president cannot simply tweak our national economic policies. We need a complete overhaul.”
Scott still stuck to the letter of his word by not endorsing before Florida’s presidential primary on March 15, 2016, when Trump beat Rubio in 66 of the state’s 67 counties (Bush had already dropped out by then). He backed Trump the next day.
During the 2024 campaign, Scott dispensed with the fiction that he would remain neutral by endorsing Trump last year over yet another Florida Man, Gov. Ron DeSantis, with whom he has had a strained relationship.
Scott advisers say the senator’s endorsement wasn’t a personal slight against DeSantis, so much as a recognition of his full support for Trump.
“This is Donald Trump’s party,” one Scott adviser said, “and only Senator Scott can be trusted by the president.”
That’s music to Trump’s ears. But it might be too off-key for a Senate that wants a modicum of institutional authority of its own.
“These are a bunch of senior citizens who each think they’re a mini-president,” said a Republican Senate aide who is not advising Scott. “They don’t like getting attacked on Twitter, even though they’re not on social media, really. And they don’t like Trump telling them to get their shinebox.”
Trump also likes Scott because Scott has taken the Fifth Amendment under oath more than he has.
The Senate republicans will get over themselves. marco and lindsey will school them or djt will primary them or fox will chew them up and spit them out.