NRSC Chair Sen. Steve Daines, First in Senate GOP Leadership, Endorses Trump for President

National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) chairman Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) on Monday endorsed former President Donald Trump for president in 2024, a major additional pickup for the former president amid several major endorsements he has racked up lately.

Daines, who made the endorsement during an appearance on Donald Trump Jr.’s Rumble show Triggered on Monday evening, is the 11th U.S. senator to back Trump’s bid to return to the White House. Daines, as chairman of the NRSC, is also the first member of the Senate GOP leadership to formally back Trump in 2024.

“The best four years I have had in the U.S. Senate is when President Trump was serving in the Oval Office,” Daines told Trump Jr. “You talk about results — we passed and he signed into law the greatest tax cut in American history. We transformed the courts — the Supreme Court and the circuit courts. We passed the greatest conservation win in 50 years, Don, the Great American Outdoors Act. We had a country that was respected and strong. Joe Biden has empowered and emboldened our adversaries by his weakness. He just shivers under his desk during the day and our adversaries now are getting increasingly bolder and that’s very, very dangerous for the world. He’s got one more thing we’ve got to finish up and that’s finish building the wall and let’s finish securing out southern border and protect our communities. I’ll tell you Don, the meth and fentanyl and the drugs are destroying so many Montana communities. For these reasons and many others, I am proud to endorse Donald J. Trump for president of the United States.”

Daines’s endorsement is particularly noteworthy given the fact that he is the Senate Republican in charge of 2024 U.S. Senate races for the party, meaning that he can help move the party’s political machinery in a way that also helps Trump. It is also significant that he is the first member of the Senate GOP leadership team, which also includes Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Senate GOP Whip John Thune, and Senate GOP conference chairman John Barrasso, to endorse anyone in the 2024 primary—and that he is endorsing Trump. McConnell, Thune, and Barrasso have not announced any 2024 endorsement. But a member of the Senate GOP leadership endorsing Trump, given his icy relationship with McConnell in particular, is a major coup for the former president and a sign of perhaps a warmer brewing relationship between Trump and party leaders who were ready to move on from him not too long ago.
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Trump, in other words, is quickly unifying the Republican Party behind his campaign to retake the White House in 2024, even before Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis—who has not formally announced a campaign — enters the race as widely expected. Trump told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview earlier this month in Indianapolis at the National Rifle Association (NRA) annual gathering that he is “honored” to be the clear frontrunner for the GOP nomination and celebrated Republicans unifying behind him.
“I think so. I think the party is very unified,” Trump said. “I also think they’re looking at the polls now and they’re saying, ‘wow, that’s impressive.’ But we’re leading by so much and they’re seeing that. I think people look back to those four years we had — we had an incredible four years then we got hit by the COVID situation, the gift from China, which was a terrible, terrible thing to have to go through that. But we did a great job with it, rebuilt the economy, gave over a stock market that was higher than it was just pre-COVID — pretty amazing. People look back to the times of especially that first two and a half years prior to the COVID coming — the China virus as I call it because that’s what it was. There’s never been anything like it in the history of our country. We can do that again, and I think we can actually do it even better again.”

Trump can’t beat Biden.

Interesting assertion fellow old-timer.

There are many ways to look at it. Is there someone else who can? Is Biden unbeatable?

I certainly think that Donald Trump is a candidate with a lot of baggage but I don't know if I have decided he is unable to win if nominated. I hope to see some discussion without name calling -- some actual debate on the facts and possibilities..

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