Donald Trump made two campaign appearances for state Rep. Rick Saccone as Saccone tumbled from being the massive favorite to losing the special election in Pennsylvania’s 18th Congressional District. But to hear Trump tell it, Democrat Conor Lamb’s win was a win for Trumpism:
“The young man last night that ran, he said, ‘Oh, I’m like Trump. Second Amendment, everything. I love the tax cuts, everything.’ He ran on that basis,” Trump said. “He ran on a campaign that said very nice things about me. I said, ‘Is he a Republican? He sounds like a Republican to me.’”
Lamb was respectful of Trump voters, who were after all a majority of voters in his district, and didn’t make Trump a big issue in the race. But “I’m like Trump”? Ha ha ha, no. On substance Lamb campaigned against big Republican priorities like Obamacare repeal and on style he was about as far from Trump as you can get. “I love the tax cuts”? Lamb explicitly ran against the Republican tax law, and not only that, but Republican groups had to stop running ads about the tax law because that message wasn’t working with voters. And Trump knows that Lamb isn’t running as a Trump mini-me: he also said that “The bottom line is when he votes, he’s going to vote with Nancy Pelosi. And he’s gonna vote with Schumer.” (Not on everything! But on things like the tax scam you’re claiming he loves, yes!)
Trump also engaged in a little fantasy time about how much he boosted Saccone:
“We had an interesting time because we lifted [Saccone] seven points up. That’s a lot,” Trump said. “And I was up 22 points, and we lifted seven, and seven normally would be enough, but we’ll see how it all comes out. It’s, like, virtually a tie.” (It was not exactly clear what Trump was basing his conclusion of a seven-point boost on.)
Let's say it's true that Saccone was down seven points. The fact that a generic Republican (and Saccone was a pretty generic Republican) in a deep red district to begin with points to national factors, and Trump is the most national factor of them all. So if Trump did lift Saccone up seven points at the end—which is implausible—it was only necessary, and only insufficient, because Trump had first dragged him down about 10 points.
Then again, talking reality to Trump’s ego is a futile endeavor at all times. On a big thing like yet another red district or state voting for a Democrat … not if you put Trump in a room with an Imax screen and surround-sound of the Fox & Friends hosts saying this was all Trump’s fault and Conor Lamb did not run as a mini-Trump would he be able to absorb the information.