POTUS Reportedly Told Fundraiser That Dem Who Won In PA Is ‘Like Trump’

WASHINGTON, DC - FEBRUARY 25: U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during the Governors' Ball in the State Dinning Room of the White House on February 25, 2018 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Olivier Douliery-Pool/Getty Images)
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After Republicans lost another special election to fill an open seat in Congress, President Donald Trump on Wednesday night offered his spin on the loss and suggested that the race was a fluke.

During a fundraiser in Missouri, Trump claimed that Conor Lamb, the Democrat who appears to have won a seat in Congress representing a conservative district in Pennsylvania, is “like Trump,” according to The Atlantic. The President suggested that Lamb won due to his similarities to himself, not because of a broader struggle Republicans face heading into the 2018 midterms.

“The young man last night that ran, he said, ‘Oh, I’m like Trump. Second Amendment, everything. I love the tax cuts, everything.’ He ran on that basis,” Trump said at the fundraiser, according to an audio recording obtained by The Atlantic. “He ran on a campaign that said very nice things about me. I said, ‘Is he a Republican? He sounds like a Republican to me.’”

While Lamb does not support new restrictions on guns beyond stronger background checks, he called the Republican tax law a “giveaway” to wealthy Americans and criticized attempts to repeal Obamacare.

Trump did later acknowledge that Lamb will likely “vote with Nancy Pelosi” once he reaches Congress, per The Atlantic.

Though it appears the Republican candidate, Rick Saccone, will lose the race, Trump claimed that his rally for Saccone lifted the candidate.

“We had an interesting time because we lifted [Saccone] seven points up. That’s a lot,” Trump said, according to The Atlantic. “And I was up 22 points, and we lifted seven, and seven normally would be enough, but we’ll see how it all comes out. It’s, like, virtually a tie.”

Read The Atlantic’s full report here.

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