Rep. Peter Meijer (R-MI) slammed the Democratic Party‘s “dangerous strategy” of boosting his primary challenger John Gibbs, who was endorsed by former President Donald Trump, to victory.
Meijer expressed his frustration over the money spent by Democrats in his primary but also took responsibility for his loss while speaking with Margaret Brennan on CBS News’s Face the Nation on Sunday. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee boosted Gibbs with a $435,000 ad buy ahead of the primary.
WITH MEIJER’S GOP PRIMARY LOSS IN MICHIGAN, TRUMP AND DEMOCRATS BOTH NOTCH A WIN
“I lost my primary, and that is on me. I take responsibility for that,” Meijer said. “But it’s important to note that it wasn’t just former President Trump who was in this race. There was about a half million dollars that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, in their first expenditures of the 2022 midterms, dumped in to help boost him.”
The congressman warned Democrats that pumping money into his challenger’s campaign may backfire if Gibbs, who has denied the results of the 2020 election, wins in November.
“While I think there was certainly a cynical calculus at play with the Democrats meddling, this is a risky strategy. It’s a dangerous strategy. Where President Biden is in his approval is so in the gutter, that it is hard to see that strategy — it is easy to see that strategy backfiring in a spectacular way, which is all the more reason why we should not be embracing the zero-sum idea of politics,” Meijer said. “We should not be embracing this notion that if we can keep a problem alive, keep it festering, but be able to gain a marginal advantage in the process, that that somehow equates to a victory.”
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Meijer lost to Gibbs in the Republican primary for Michigan’s 3rd Congressional District last week by more than 3 percentage points. The first-term congressman was one of 10 Republicans to vote for Trump’s second impeachment in connection to the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.
