Trump campaign demands GOP's Dave Hughes stop touting '18 endorsement tweet
WASHINGTON Donald Trump's re-election campaign has demanded that a Minnesota Republican running for Congress stop using an old presidential tweet to promote his new campaign in a crowded GOP primary race.
"Your 2020 campaign's use of President Trump's 2018 endorsement, in any form, unfairly confuses voters," an attorney for the Trump campaign wrote in a Nov. 25 letter to Dave Hughes, a candidate for the Republican nomination in Minnesota's Seventh Congressional District.
Hughes, a retired Air Force major from Karlstad, won Trump's backing last year to challenge U.S. Rep. Collin Peterson, a 15-term Democrat who beat him by 4 percentage points. Trump weighed in on his Twitter account in September of 2018, writing: "Dave has my total endorsement." But this year, Hughes is one of five Republicans running in the western Minnesota district that Trump carried by a big margin in 2016. The president's tweet is featured prominently on Hughes' campaign fliers, website, Twitter profile page and other promotional materials.
By Tuesday afternoon, after a Star Tribune story went online, the Trump tweet had been removed from the front page of Hughes' campaign website. But it was still pinned at the top of Hughes' Twitter profile.
Among Hughes' rivals for the Republican Party endorsement is former Lt. Gov. Michelle Fischbach. Peterson, a conservative Democrat who has held on in an increasingly Republican district, has not yet said if he'll run for re-election next year.
More..
http://www.startribune.com/trump-campaign-demands-gop-s-dave-hughes-stop-touting-18-tweet-of-support/565738922/