Another Republican who spent his primary wrapping himself in Donald Trump has quietly peeled the president off his campaign website, this time in a red-leaning Florida seat.
Casey Askar, the GOP nominee in Florida’s redrawn 22nd Congressional District, ran the primary as a self-styled “Trump Conservative,” at one point pushing to rename part of Interstate 75 the “President Donald J. Trump Interstate.” His site featured the president prominently, first reported by Politico’s West Wing Playbook, which verified the changes through the Wayback Machine.
Trump made it official, and less than 24 hours after the president handed Askar his “Complete and Total Endorsement” this month, the campaign scrubbed a photo of Trump and rewrote the homepage pledge.
The old line read, “I’ll work with President Trump to keep building the American economy.” The new one strips the president out entirely: “I will work to sponsor and pass pro-American legislation to keep building the American economy.”
Askar did not respond to Politico’s requests for comment, but he is far from alone.
A growing list of Trump-endorsed Republicans, from Kentucky Senate hopeful Andy Barr to Florida’s Mike Beltran and Kentucky’s Ralph Alvarado, have deleted the president’s name or image from their sites after their primaries, amid Trump’s sinking approval heading into November.
Commentator David Pakman recently described Trump as an “anchor” that endorsed Republicans “can ride to the bottom of the ocean.”
The retreat is notable in Askar’s district, which a mid-decade GOP gerrymander reshaped into Trump +11 territory, yet where he now faces Democrat Pia Dandiya in a race Democrats hope to contest.
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