The Republican plan to quickly confirm Todd Blanche as attorney general has clearly unraveled, though the process is still unfolding. MS NOW reported that Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, one of a handful of GOP senators who have withheld support and delayed the process, met behind closed doors on Thursday with the nominee in the hopes of finding a resolution. As things stand, they remain at an impasse.

It’s against this backdrop that Donald Trump tried to give his former defense attorney a boost with a new statement published to his social media platform. It read in part:

John Cornyn never had a problem with the so called “Fund,” which will not benefit me, but rather the great American Patriots who were hunted down like dogs and whose lives were unfairly and illegally destroyed by the Crooked Joe Biden Administration, until after I decided to Endorse and Support his Republican Primary opponent in Texas, who easily won the Nomination for the United States Senate. Perhaps there has never been a group of people treated so badly in our Nation’s history. They are suffering still, many ruined, and I felt that they should be given compensation for what has been done to them. […]

I will always feel that these victims of government abuse should be paid back for what they were forced to endure, their lives have been ruined!

The president may not fully appreciate why this is the wrong argument, at the wrong time, from the wrong person. In fact, by trying to help Blanche, Trump issued a statement that’s likely to hurt his own nominee.

At the heart of the problem for the attorney general nominee are concerns from at least two Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee — Cornyn and Thom Tillis of North Carolina — who have focused their concerns on a rather specific point.

As MS NOW has reported, both GOP senators, who are poised to exit Capitol Hill at the end of the year, “say the Trump administration has yet to satisfy their demands on Trump’s IRS settlement. The pair is asking Blanche to formally kill the so-called anti-weaponization fund and narrow the scope of the IRS audit immunity afforded to Trump, his family, his businesses and others under the agreement.”

In other words, one of the main things standing in Blanche’s way is Team Trump’s refusal to formally kill a compensation fund, widely panned by members of both parties as a “slush fund,” which critics have said could be used to reward Jan. 6 rioters with taxpayer money.

With this in mind, the president decided to make the case in support of a fund that could be used to reward Jan. 6 rioters with taxpayer money.

At a crucial juncture, Trump thought it would be a good idea to prove his critics right. It also provides fresh context to comments Cornyn made to Capitol Hill reporters on Thursday morning, when he said he believed he and administration officials were close to a resolution on Wednesday, but “higher-ups” at the White House intervened.

Complicating matters is that Cornyn and Tillis aren’t alone. Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who’s also wrapping up his congressional career this year, suggested Thursday that he might oppose Blanche too, and hours later, Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska was asked for her assessment of the nominee’s eventual odds of success.

“I would say, based on the comments that I’ve seen coming from the White House, not very good,” Murkowski told NOTUS.

Trump could have taken steps to make things better. He instead made matters worse.

The post In new effort to boost Blanche, Trump pushes the wrong argument at the wrong time appeared first on MS NOW.

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From MS Now.