Update: Late on Monday, Trump appears to have endorsed everyone named "Eric" in Missouri's GOP Senate primary.
Former president Donald Trump posted on Truth Social earlier today that he’ll be endorsing a candidate in the wild Republican primary battle to fill Missouri’s open Senate seat – and disgraced ex-Governor Eric Greitens may be the beneficiary.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported, “In a statement posted Monday morning on Truth Social, a mini-blogging site similar to Twitter, Trump wrote, “I will be Endorsing in The Great State of Missouri Republican race (Nomination) for Senate sometime today!”
After withering attacks from mainstream Republicans, Greitens has fallen to third place in the polling behind state Atty. Gen. Eric Schmitt and Rep. Vicky Hartzler. But Trump has launched sharp attacks on both of those rivals, most recently this one reported last night by Breitbart.com:
‘Too Bad!’: Donald Trump Slams Eric Schmitt’s Missouri Campaign for ‘Great Dishonesty in Politics.’
It was the fourth in a series of pro-Greitens anti-Schmitt attacks launched by MAGA-loving Breitbart over the weekend, a sign that rumors of Greitens’ political demise may have been greatly exaggerated.
The website served up this sensational – and perhaps dubious –claim that a new survey showed that “Support For Missouri’s Eric Greitens grows.”
“Greitens has maintained his lead…and his support amongst primary voters has expanded, according to the latest numbers from a private survey the Greitens campaign exclusively shared with Breitbart News.”
The website claimed that “a staggering 513,245 voters as of Friday night, engaging 23 percent of the half a million individuals in live phone calls. Of the more than 100,000 live voters contacted, a strong 34 percent say they are supporting Greitens in the primary, giving him a four-percentage point lead over his next closest competitor, Missouri Attorney general Eric Schmitt, who took 30 percent of the response. Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-MO), whom former President Donald J. Trump has said he is not endorsing, received support from 21 percent of poll participants.”
Breitbart also ran a post Saturday under the banner headline, “Exclusive: Missouri GOP Senate Candidate Eric Greitens: ‘Eric Schmitt Is a RINO.’ In another post Saturday, Breitbart had called out the “fake poll” that drew Trump’s ire.
