In Federalist #62, James Madison explained that service in the U.S. Senate requires extensive knowledge and stability of character. Senators, he added, must resist yielding to “the impulse of sudden and violent passions, and being seduced by factious leaders into intemperate and pernicious resolutions.”
Donald Trump probably has not read Federalist #62. And, it seems clear, Trump has only two criteria for endorsing candidates for the U.S. Senate: sycophantic submission to him and full-throated declarations that he won the 2020 presidential election. The Senate candidates he has backed so far are way — way — out of the political mainstream. They are unfit to serve in what has been celebrated as “the world’s greatest deliberative body.”
Born and raised in Georgia, Herschel Walker was an all-American football star for the University of Georgia Bulldogs in the 1980s. He has resided in Texas for a decade. Walker’s turbulent personal history includes alleged threats against his former wife, exaggerated claims of financial success, and struggles with a dissociative identity disorder. In December 2021 he acknowledged that his repeated claims that he graduated from college were not true.
Seen but rarely heard on the campaign trail, Walker tells his audiences he is qualified to be a U.S. Senator “because I love America, and I’m going to fight for America.” When he elaborates, his remarks become, well, incoherent: “Build Back Better. You probably want to become energy independent. Otherwise, you’re going to depend on other countries for your livelihood. Build Back Better. You probably want something written, like law of the land, stating that all men are to be treated equal. Oh! We have a constitution. So, you probably want to put people in charge of who’s going to fight for the constitution. Just thinking. God bless you.”
Kelly Tshibaka, the former commissioner of administration in Alaska, who spent much of her adult life in Washington D.C., is challenging Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) for the Republican nomination. Tshibaka has said “there is no wall of separation between church and state;” “many people who have used illegal drugs experience demonic oppression;” homosexuality “is caused by sexual molestation during childhood,” and can be prevented “with the help of Jesus Christ” through “conversion therapy.” Tshibaka also believes that the book and movie series “Twilight” is “evil” and exposes readers and viewers “to the enemy’s attacks.”
Minutes after Lara Trump, his daughter-in-law, declared she would not enter the Republican Senatorial primary in North Carolina, Donald Trump endorsed Congressman Ted Budd. The Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol, Budd claims, “was nothing. It was just patriots standing up.” Although Budd voted against the American Rescue Plan, his family business requested and received a $10 million Payroll Protection Program loan.
Budd opposes universal background checks for all firearm sales. He is against preventing individuals on terrorist watch lists from purchasing guns. He supports legislation that would allow 20 million Americans to carry concealed weapons across state lines.
Intent on pushing to outlaw abortion “all the way back,” Budd co-sponsored legislation granting equal protection under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution for the right to life of each born and preborn human person. The bill defines human person as “each member of the species homo sapiens at all stages of life, including the moment of fertilization.” It provides no exceptions for rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother.
Alabama Republican Congressman Mo Brooks sought and failed to win the Republican nomination for Senator without Trump’s endorsement in 2020. This time he has received the former president’s support — in part, no doubt, because on Jan. 6 Brooks declared, “Today is the day American patriots start taking down names and kicking ass,” shortly before rioters disrupted congressional certification of the presidential election. Belying his subsequent claim that he had no idea violence would ensue, Brooks wore body armor under his jacket when he addressed the crowd.
Brooks is widely lampooned for his grotesquely uninformed and inflammatory opinions. Following the mass shooting in a nightclub in Orlando, Fla., he asserted: “the Muslim community, if it had its way, would kill every homosexual in the United States.” When experts presented statistics about rising sea levels to the House Science Committee, Brooks refused to attribute it to climate change: “rocks are falling in the ocean… What about the White Cliffs of Dover… and California, where you have the waves crashing against the shorelines… All of that displaces water which forces it to rise.”
Trump also endorsed Sean Parnell for the GOP Senate nomination in Pennsylvania. But Parnell suspended his campaign following a judge’s ruling that his estranged wife’s accusations of spousal and child abuse were sufficiently credible to justify awarding her primary custody of their three children.
And Trump is apparently still considering an endorsement of Eric Greitens as the Republican candidate for U.S. Senator from Missouri, even though Greitens resigned as governor of the state four years ago after his hairdresser told a state panel he tied her up in his basement, stripped her naked, forced her to have oral sex, and threatened to blackmail her with compromising photographs to cover up their affair.
Imagine the U.S. Senate (and the House of Representatives) with slim Republican majorities in 2023 and some of these Trump-endorsed officeholders holding the balance of power — then cast your ballot with this very real possibility in mind.
Glenn C. Altschuler is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Professor of American Studies at Cornell University. He is the co-author (with Stuart Blumin) of “Rude Republic: Americans and Their Politics in the Nineteenth Century.”