A week before his primary, Republicans in Michigan and Washington say Major’s vote has made him a clear underdog in his primary race against John Gibbs, a former Department of Housing and Urban Development official who is backed by Trump, the latest sign that loyalty to the former President remains paramount in GOP infighting.
“I think it was the biggest career-ending move in history, probably, to do that,” Gibbs told CNN, saying it “devastatingly hurts” the congressman’s re-election chances.
Meijer, 34, says he would do it again.
“Not for one second,” he told CNN when asked if he regretted the vote.
As he storms his district, Meijer said he faces questions from constituents about why he voted — even as he tries to explain that his first two years in office were about much more than just being one of 10 Republicans who voted for Trump’s impeachment. But when asked why he voted to indict Trump for inciting the riot, he says it’s absolutely blunt.
“For three hours after the attack on the Capitol, when I, the chamber of the House, and several hundred of my colleagues had to flee the mob, when the vice president, his wife, and his daughter were running from the crowds who shouted ‘hang Mike Pence. When the next two people in the presidential line of succession were uncovered and had to be taken to safe locations, for three hours the President did nothing,” Meijer said.
“I think it was a disgraceful dereliction of duty,” Meijer said of Trump.
But what worries Republicans in Washington is that Major’s West Michigan district is in serious danger of flipping to Democrats, thanks to redistricting that shifted the district from one Trump narrowly carried to one Biden won by nine points. In a district once represented by Gerald Ford, Hillary Solten could emerge as the first female Democrat to represent the traditionally conservative district — a rare bright spot for their party in a bleak midterm environment.
National Democrats have begun pouring money into the race in an effort to shore up Gibbs, despite labeling him and other MAGA Republicans as “too extreme,” a strategy promoted by Democratic leaders struggling to hold on to a slim majority them in Parliament.
Gibbs, in the CNN interview, made claims that could become general election fodder.
While parroting Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, he downplayed the fact that there was no evidence to back it up, comparing it to the “mafia” — meaning people knew the mob were murderers but didn’t there was evidence in it’s time to prove it. He argued that most people were peaceful on January 6, 2021, and was sympathetic to those imprisoned for harsh sentences. He said he didn’t know if Trump supporters were the ones who breached the Capitol, while saying “no,” Trump didn’t deserve any blame.
Gibbs suggested they should “look at everything” about the 2020 election, even if the voting machines changed votes, and claimed the House GOP majority should look into it.
On whether he attended any of the Jan. 6 House Select Committee hearings that provided evidence of Trump’s role behind the attack and the failure to stop it: “No, I haven’t. I’d rather take the claws out of my feet.”
Gibbs also expressed strong anti-abortion views, saying that “it’s really unfair” to “kill a baby” if the mother has been raped, saying she should bring the baby to life and the rapist should be prosecuted. He also argued that saving a mother’s life is often used as a “red herring” as the technology exists to save the life of a mother and baby, so “it’s not really an issue”. He criticized Meijer for supporting aid to Ukraine, which he believes will lose the war against Russia.
But Gibbs argued that it was Major who was most vulnerable in a general election.
“So there’s a tremendous amount of just betrayal that people feel on an emotional level, and it’s palpable,” Gibbs said of Meijer.
He added: “If Peter Meijer wins the primary, he can’t win the quarterback,” Gibbs said. “He’s going to lose a lot of the Republican vote.”
But GOP leaders don’t seem to agree. Even as Trump has swayed Gibbs, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s leadership PAC quietly dropped $10,000 to Meijer’s campaign, which got another $5,000 boost from its super PAC, according to its financial records campaign. And while Meijer and its super PAC have run ads promoting his candidacy, Gibbs has yet to run an ad on TV since he’s raised only a fraction of the money as Meijer.
Meijer has criticized Gibbs for moving to West Michigan to run for the seat, which Gibbs dismisses by pointing out how he was born and raised in Michigan although he has worked in Japan and Washington. And Gibbs singles out Meijer’s vote for bipartisan bills to provide $40 billion in aid to Ukraine and curb gun violence. But the impeachment vote takes precedence over other issues, according to Republican officials.
Despite his financial advantages and coming from a famous Michigan family — he is the grandson of Hendrick Major, who founded the grocery chain that bears their name — Major, a U.S. Army veteran who served in Iraq, still tries to explain to voters where he stands.
“I have a lot of people who start out hostile and then when they get a chance to hear a little bit more, they get it,” Meijer said at a boxing gym where he was meeting with voters. “And they say, ‘thank you.’ But that’s harder to convey in three quick spots, harder to convey in 87 words in a TV spot.”
Gibbs compares lack of ‘falsified’ election data to ‘mafia’
So far, Trump has won his revenge against some of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach him. Four lawmakers — Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger, Ohio Rep. Anthony Gonzalez, Michigan Rep. Fred Upton and New York Rep. John Katko — chose to withdraw. South Carolina Rep. Tom Rice lost his primary, and Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney is encouraging Democrats to vote for her, trailing her Trump-backed challenger Harriet Hageman.
Of the 10, only California Rep. David Valladao won his primary, which Trump did not endorse. Trump has endorsed challengers to Washington Reps. Dan Newhouse and Jamie Herrera Beutler, but those members could benefit from their state’s open primary system against fractured fields on Aug. 2.
In November, Trump endorsed Gibbs, saying, “Unlike Peter Major, he will not turn his back on Michigan.” In April, the former President traveled to Michigan, rallied the faithful and mocked how to say Meijer’s name. (Meijer said, “It was pretty clear he wasn’t entirely sure who I was in the 92nd digression on how to pronounce my last name,” which rhymes with “fire.”)
When Gibbs first met Trump at Mar-a-Lago, the first thing the former President said to him was, “I didn’t know you were going to be handsome,” according to Gibbs. But he won praise from Trump as he embraced the former President’s false claims that he actually won the 2020 presidential election.
Asked by CNN if the election was rigged, Gibbs said: “I think there was enough shenanigans to change the outcome, yes.”
Gibbs said there were “anomalies”. Asked about the conspiracy that voting machines changed votes in 2020, Gibbs said: “I think we have to look at everything and see what happens.” Although the nation’s voting population grew between 2016 and 2020 and voting by mail became more common, he claimed, “if a President gets more votes the second time than the first time, you always win the election.”
Joe Biden won the 2020 election, a fact confirmed in court and in Congress, and acknowledged by Trump’s attorney general, White House counsel, and his daughter, among many others. But when confronted with the fact that no evidence of widespread voter fraud ever emerged, Gibbs compared Biden’s victory to a criminal scheme cooked up by the Mafia.
“I think one analogy you can see here is the mafia,” Gibbs told CNN. “For many years, you could never catch them. You knew they were throwing guys off rooftops and stuff, but all you could find was tax evasion and money laundering because you don’t have the legal and investigative framework to catch them.”
Gibbs added: “And just because there aren’t convictions and court cases, that doesn’t mean they didn’t do things. So I think there are some similarities to these election things that we’re seeing. We’re working toward, I think, the right kind of legal framework and prosecutorial framework to get to the bottom of it, but we’re still not there yet. But I think we’ll get there, like they did with the Mafia.”
Gibbs also said Trump was not responsible for the attack on Capitol Hill and “the vast, vast majority of people behaved perfectly” that day, while expressing sympathy for those who were jailed.
“I think there are some problematic aspects with what’s going on with the prosecutions,” Gibbs said. “But I think, by and large, what I heard is that the people who were there were peaceful and they were protesting peacefully. So I don’t hold President Trump in any way responsible for anything.”
Meijer, who was at the Capitol on Jan. 6, says Gibbs is creating an alternate reality.
“These fictions have consequences,” Meijer said.
“I will say one of the frustrations is … there’s a lot of ‘Well, no, either it wasn’t that bad, or if it was bad, it was an FBI plot,’ or something,” Meijer said. “I mean, because reality I think is so damning that sometimes you have to create an alternative.”
Solten, who says she played no role in the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s strategy to support Gibbs, says the candidate energized the right wing with those claims.
“I think Gibbs has definitely fired up a certain segment of the electorate on these allegations,” he said. “And I think it’s…
