About a month before Minnesota’s gubernatorial primary, Donald Trump issued an unexpected endorsement: The president threw his support behind election denier and pillow salesman Mike Lindell’s Republican candidacy. It wasn’t a perfunctory move. In the days and weeks that followed, Trump leaned into his support for Lindell, publishing a series of items to his social media platform urging GOP voters in Minnesota to nominate the notorious conspiracy theorist.
Recent polls suggested Lindell had a real chance of success, but as we’re often reminded, polling a primary in mid-August is difficult; as the dust settled on the race, the surveys proved wrong. MS NOW reported, as part of the network’s live blog coverage:
In Minnesota, Sen. Amy Klobuchar is projected to be the Democratic gubernatorial nominee. Trump-endorsed Mike Lindell, the MyPillow founder and a vocal 2020 election conspiracy theorist, is projected to lose the Republican primary to state Rep. Lisa Demuth.
The results weren’t especially close: With just about all of the ballots tallied, Demuth appears to have defeated Lindell by roughly 11 points.
Once it became clear that he had fallen far short, Lindell questioned the results, alleged irregularities and refused to concede, which was entirely on-brand, if nothing else.
But while Lindell’s supporters wait for another round of new conspiracy theories about another race, of greater interest is the frequency with which Trump-backed Republicans have lost this year.
Lindell’s defeat comes less than a week after Rep. Andy Ogles lost a GOP primary in Tennessee, despite enjoying the president’s support. Just two days earlier, former federal law enforcement officer Amir Hassan, having received a presidential endorsement, lost a Republican congressional primary in Michigan by a wide margin to a candidate who wasn’t actually running at the time.
What’s more, in Iowa’s gubernatorial race in June, Trump threw his support behind Rep. Randy Feenstra, who narrowly lost his Republican primary to Zach Lahn. Two weeks later, the president endorsed Lt. Gov. Burt Jones in Georgia’s gubernatorial primary, and Jones lost to healthcare executive Rick Jackson by roughly 5 points.
All told, seven Republicans have failed in 2026 primaries, despite enjoying the incumbent president’s support.
This clearly is at odds with the image the White House is eager to present. Indeed, Trump has repeatedly professed an ability to choose election winners single-handedly, especially in Republican primaries. Last September, for example, the president said, “Do you know, almost every single person I’ve endorsed has won? I can’t think of anyone who hasn’t. If I endorse a person, they win. … With the Republican Party, it’s like 399-0. Think of that.”
As recently as March, he added, “My Endorsements within the Republican Party have been virtually insurmountable! It is such an honor to realize and say that almost everyone I Endorse WINS, and wins by a lot.”
Months later, the words “virtually” and “almost” stand out.
Trump is not the political colossus he has long claimed to be. On the contrary, he’s an unpopular lame duck who’s finding that his own party’s rank-and-file supporters are disregarding his endorsements with increasing frequency.
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