Donald Trump lashed out at Republicans and “foolish” Mazi Melesa Pilip after she lost the special election in New York’s 3rd Congressional District to Democrat Tom Suozzi.
Suozzi defeated Pilip on Tuesday night to take the seat that was left vacant when the disgraced former GOP Representative George Santos was expelled from Congress after he was charged with multiple fraud offenses.
The defeat means that the GOP’s already slim majority in the House has been reduced even further, as well as giving a boost to the Democratic Party and President Joe Biden heading into November’s general election.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump suggested that Pilip, a registered Democrat who holds office as a Republican, lost the election because she didn’t seek the backing of the former president.
Former Congressman George Santos pictured in Washington D.C. in December. He was expelled from Congress after he was charged with multiple fraud offences. Donald Trump has hit out at Mazi Melesa Pilip after she lost…
MANDEL NGAN/AFP
“Republicans just don’t learn, but maybe she was still a Democrat? I have an almost 99% Endorsement Success Rate in Primaries, and a very good number in the General Elections, as well, but just watched this very foolish woman, Mazi Melesa Pilip, running in a race where she didn’t endorse me and tried to ‘straddle the fence,’ when she would have easily WON if she understood anything about MODERN DAY politics in America,” Trump wrote.
“MAGA, WHICH IS MOST OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY, STAYED HOME – AND IT ALWAYS WILL, UNLESS IT IS TREATED WITH THE RESPECT THAT IT DESERVES. I STAYED OUT OF THE RACE, ‘I WANT TO BE LOVED!’ GIVE US A REAL CANDIDATE IN THE DISTRICT FOR NOVEMBER. SUOZZI, I KNOW HIM WELL, CAN BE EASILY BEATEN!”
Trump, the presumed 2024 Republican nominee, has often cited the success of his endorsements going on to win their respective races as proof of his influence on the GOP and its voters. However, a large majority of these endorsements down the years have been for incumbents who are already heavily favored to win their primaries and subsequent elections.
Trump was also widely blamed for the GOP severely underperforming in the 2022 midterms, where the party failed to ride a “red wave” as a number of Trump’s MAGA candidates lost their House and Senate races across the country.
With a majority of the votes counted, Suozzi is comfortably beating Pilip by nearly eight points (53.9 percent to 46.1 percent), according to The Associated Press.
Pilip, who was born in Ethiopia before migrating to Israel and eventually serving in the paratroopers brigade in the Israel Defense Forces, spent most of her campaign keeping her distance from Trump.
Pilip only recently confirmed to the New York Post that she voted for Trump in the 2020 election. She also told FOX 5 that she didn’t think the 77-year-old is too old to run for office again.
“I think mentally, he’s stable, he’s healthy and he served the American people as a president,” she added. “He did great things for our country.”
Suozzi, who previously held the seat between but stepped down after an unsuccessful bid for New York governor in 2022, distanced himself from Biden during his campaign, also telling Fox 5 that “the bottom line” the 81-year-old president is “too old.”
In a statement, Biden’s campaign team linked Pilip’s election defeat to Trump.
“Donald Trump lost again tonight. When Republicans run on Trump’s extreme agenda—even in a Republican-held seat—voters reject them,” Biden’s campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said.
“As we saw in 2020, 2022, 2023, and now tonight, when it comes down to the choice between Donald Trump’s chaos and division and President Biden, who wakes up everyday working to get things done and make Americans’ lives better, voters are consistently choosing the leadership of President Biden and Democrats.”
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