Trump-loving GOP Senate candidate caught not really loving Trump
Turns out pro-Trump fanboy Todd Rokita is just a fair-weather fan.
Rep. Todd Rokita (R-IN) is one of Trump’s biggest fans and staunchest defenders.
The congressman, who is currently in the race to win the Republican nomination for Senate in Indiana’s primary election, has spent the better part of the past year positioning himself as the most Trumpian of pro-Trump lawmakers, even going as far as carrying a cardboard cutout of Trump to his campaign events.
In his campaign for a Senate seat, Rokita has slammed his Republican opponents for not being sufficiently adherent to the MAGA agenda, calling one of them a “Never Trumper” and the other a “RINO.”
But the Trump fanboy has a secret: Just two years ago, he wasn’t such a fan of Trump.
In a recently surfaced interview from February 2016, Rokita railed against Trump as he explained why he supported Sen. Marco Rubio’s bid to win the GOP nomination for president. Referring to Trump as “vulgar, if not profane” Rokita said Rubio was the only one with the potential to be “presidential.”
“When you see Marco contrasted with Donald Trump — I mean someone who is vulgar, if not profane,” Rokita said. “At some point you have to be presidential. People expect that and you see that in Marco Rubio.”
The remarks are a sharp contrast from the rhetoric Rokita has used on the campaign trail this year, showing that the Trump-loving candidate in the MAGA hat was once solidly opposed to the agenda he now claims to represent.
Rokita, who has tried to frame the GOP primary as a race divided along pro-Trump/anti-Trump lines, now finds himself in the awkward position of having to explain his own anti-Trump past as he criticizes his opponents for the very same thing.
While he may be Trump’s biggest cheerleader now, the pro-Trump fanboy appears to be nothing more than a fair-weather fan.
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