By Donald Trump on Friday netted endorsements for his White House bid from a handful of House Republicans from Pennsylvania, the first lawmakers to formally back the former president since his federal arraignment 10 days ago.
Trump, the clear frontrunner in the race for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, was also endorsed by North Carolina Lt. Gov. and gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson, who earned raucous applause when he announced his decision on stage at an annual conference of religious conservatives.
“This nation needs a fighter,” Robinson said. “Someone who is willing to go onto the world stage, walking boldly, strongly, waving the American flag, saying, ‘The Americans are here, and we are in charge again.'”
Trump last week pleaded not guilty to 37 criminal counts related to his retention of classified records, and alleged efforts to stop the government from getting them back, after leaving the White House in 2021. Some of his former Republican allies, such as ex-Attorney General William Barr, have said the indictment against Trump is “damning.”
Yet many other Republicans, including most of Trump’s primary opponents, have been reluctant to wield the frontrunner’s legal troubles against him. The latest endorsements further indicate that even after becoming the first former president ever to face federal criminal charges, Trump’s grip on a major swath of the Republican Party remains firm.
As if to drive home that point, the same crowd that cheered Robinson also loudly booed another GOP presidential candidate, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, when he criticized Trump for a “failure of leadership.”
“You can boo all you want,” Christie, one of Trump’s top GOP critics, told the audience of the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority conference in Washington, D.C. “But here’s the thing. Our faith teaches us that people have to take responsibility for what they do,” Christie said.
Those remarks came shortly after the Trump campaign announced his “Pennsylvania Federal Leadership Team,” including five current House Republicans from the Keystone State: Mike Kelly, Dan Meuser, Scott Perry, Guy Reschenthaler and John Joyce.
Reschenthaler, the House Republican chief deputy whip, is the second member of the chamber’s GOP leadership to endorse Trump after House Republican Conference Chair Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York.
The endorsements from more than half of Pennsylvania’s House Republican delegation bring Trump’s total number of congressional endorsements to 69, including 10 senators, according to an NBC News tally. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Trump’s nearest Republican primary competitor, has so far amassed five congressional endorsements.
Trump’s Pennsylvania coalition also includes former Rep. Fred Keller and Carla Sands, the former U.S. ambassador to Denmark, the campaign said.
It’s not the first time Trump has won more Republican officials’ support after being charged with crimes. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, R-Miss., endorsed Trump in April on the same day he was set to be arraigned in Manhattan on state charges of falsifying business records.
Rep. Andrew Clyde, R-Ga., endorsed Trump days before his latest arraignment in Florida on federal charges.
Polls of the GOP primary field showed Trump widening his lead after his first indictment. A CNN poll conducted after Trump was arraigned on the federal charges found the former president’s support slightly dipping, though he remained the clear Republican polling leader.
Trump is set to speak at the Faith and Freedom conference on Saturday evening. Preceding him on Friday’s stage were a slew of his Republican primary rivals, including DeSantis, former Vice President Mike Pence and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott. Former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez and other presidential hopefuls were also on the schedule.
The gathering of religious conservatives prompted some of those candidates to tout their records on abortion more clearly than they have done elsewhere on the campaign trail. The issue has split some Republicans since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, marking a victory for anti-abortion activists that was later seen to galvanize Democratic voter turnout.
DeSantis, who has seldom trumpeted his state’s six-week abortion ban since he quietly signed it into law earlier this year, said Friday that it “was the right thing to do.”
Scott, who fumbled a question on abortion near the start of his presidential campaign, told the crowd that the pro-abortion left has “lost faith in life itself.”
Pence, Trump’s former vice president who is running on a more traditionally conservative platform, urged “every Republican candidate for president” to “support a ban on abortion before 15 weeks as a minimum nationwide standard.”
