With governor multi-endorsement, Trump once more takes Missouri GOP voters for fools | Opinion

Donald Trump doesn’t take Missouri seriously. He doesn’t take Missouri Republicans seriously.

He thinks the Show-Me State is a big joke.

How do we know this? Because on Saturday, Trump made his long-awaited endorsement in the GOP primary for Missouri governor — and his answer was “all of the above.”

That’s right. He endorsed Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe. And he endorsed Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft. And he endorsed state Sen. Bill Eigel.

“All have had excellent careers, and have been with me from the beginning. They are MAGA and America First all the way!” Trump wrote on his social media site. “I can’t hurt two of them by Endorsing one so, therefore, I’m going to Endorse, for Governor of the Great State of Missouri, Jay Ashcroft, Mike Kehoe, and Bill Eigel. Choose any one of them — You can’t go wrong!”

That’s not really an endorsement, is it? When you endorse everybody, you endorse nobody.

Which might be funny or interesting, except that it was the second time in two years Trump gave Missouri Republicans the brush-off.

Back in 2022, faced with a choice between Eric Greitens and Eric Schmitt to be the Republican nominee to the U.S. Senate, the former president — at just about the last possible second — also picked “all of the above.”

“I trust the Great People of Missouri, on this one, to make up their own minds, much as they did when they gave me landslide victories in the 2016 and 2020 Elections,” Trump wrote then, “and I am therefore proud to announce that ERIC has my Complete and Total Endorsement!”

Hilarious, right? See what he did there?

Instead of doing something useful, the former president keeps offering Missouri Republicans the equivalent of a harried parent saying yes to a child who won’t stop asking about ice cream. He has to say something. GOP voters are looking to him, after all. But he gives them nothing, in a storm of badly capitalized words.

Chose Kansas’ Schmidt over own administration staffer

It’s not like Trump can’t make a decision. At almost the same time the former president announced his Missouri non-endorsement, he gave his approval to former Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt in the Sunflower State’s 2nd District GOP primary for U.S. House, even though one of Schmidt’s opponents — Jeff Kahrs — actually served in Trump’s administration.

So Trump makes endorsements all the time. He even routinely chooses among loyalists. When it comes to Missouri, though, he seemingly can’t be bothered.

I won’t try to speculate why that’s so. Maybe he simply takes Missouri for granted.

But it’s probably fair to say that in both Missouri GOP races that Trump has shrugged off, there were clearly some candidates who were worse than others.

It’s kind of alarming that Trump can’t or won’t see that.

Schmitt, for example, hasn’t been my cup of tea in the Senate. But he was clearly a much better choice in 2022 than Greitens — a former governor who departed office under the cloud of gravely serious sexual and campaign finance scandals, and who ran a scary commercial depicting him “RINO hunting,” bursting into a home with firearm in hand — who easily could have lost the Senate seat to a Democrat.

Similarly, all three Missouri Republicans running for governor — Kehoe, Ashcroft, Eigel — are running distastefully ultra-MAGA campaigns. Fine. That’s what GOP voters seem to demand. But Eigel is running such an extreme campaign, featuring racist anti-immigrant ads, and has been such a disruptive force in the Missouri Senate that he, too, might give Democrats an opening this fall.

Which might be better for Missouri, honestly. But Republicans might get cranky about it.

It’s not that hard to distinguish between the better and worse candidates in these major races, between the folks who are the smart play, politically, and those who are risky. All it takes is 15 minutes and a Google search.

But Trump can’t be bothered. Trump’s advisers can’t be bothered. The former president simply doesn’t seem to take Missouri very seriously.

Joel Mathis is a regular Kansas City Star and Wichita Eagle Opinion correspondent. Formerly a writer and editor at Kansas newspapers, he served nine years as a syndicated columnist.