Politics
A Devastating Trade Spat With China Shows Few Signs of Abating
President Trump’s rapidly escalating trade war with China has resulted in eye-watering tariffs on products exchanged between the countries and scrambled prospects for many global businesses that depend on the trade. And there is no end in sight.
The Trump administration has been waiting for the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, to call Mr. Trump personally, but Beijing appears wary of putting Mr. Xi in an unpredictable and potentially embarrassing situation with the U.S. president.
With the two governments at an impasse, businesses that rely on sourcing products from China — varying from hardware stores to toymakers — have been thrown into turmoil. The triple-digit tariff rates have forced many to halt shipments entirely.
Trump officials have argued that the status quo with China on trade is not sustainable. Mr. Trump has rapidly ratcheted up tariffs on Chinese products, from 54 percent on April 2 to 145 percent just one week later. The Chinese government has argued that the actions are unfair and closely matched his moves, raising its tariffs on American goods to 125 percent on Friday.
But on Friday night, the administration created a significant carve out to its tariffs on China when it exempted some electronics, including smartphones, laptops and televisions. Those products will still be subject to other tariffs that Mr. Trump has put in place, like a 20 percent fee he added to Chinese goods in response to the country’s role in the fentanyl trade.
Mr. Trump has said he would like to speak with Mr. Xi, but he has stopped short of requesting a phone call, believing that it is the Chinese government’s turn to ask for such a call, according to people familiar with the matter. Trump officials say that dozens of countries have reached out to the administration about negotiations since the levies were imposed. China did not, and instead responded with harsh words and tariffs of its own.
Across the Trump administration, some officials are concerned that the trade war could soon escalate into a national security crisis, potentially causing the Chinese to move up plans for a military invasion of Taiwan.
The Pentagon is assessing the impact of China potentially cutting off rare earth exports to the United States and possibly blocking certain critical components used in U.S. weapons systems, according to a person with knowledge of the preparations. The aim is to fully ascertain what harm the Chinese could inflict on America’s ability to produce and maintain certain weapons and ammunition.
Mr. Trump continues to express optimism, saying that he has always gotten along with Mr. Xi and that “something positive” will come out of the relationship. But analysts have suggested that the situation may already have spiraled out of control.
Julian Evans-Pritchard, the head of China economics for the research firm Capital Economics, said the fact that the Chinese authorities had repeatedly matched U.S. tariff hikes suggested that they were in no rush to negotiate.
“A partial rollback of tariffs still seems likely at some point,” he said. “But it is hard to envisage a meaningful reset in the U.S.-China relationship.”
At a briefing on Friday, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, declined to say whether the countries were in communication.
“I’m not going to comment on communications that are happening, or may not be happening, or either way, we’ll leave it to our national security team to get these discussions underway,” she said. She said the president was optimistic, and that he had “made it very clear he’s open to a deal with China.”
Speaking last week at the White House, Mr. Trump said that “China wants to make a deal. They just don’t know how quite to go about it.” He added that the Chinese were “proud people.”
Mr. Trump’s moves have taken tariffs to a level far past what would be prohibitive for trade, creating crises for many American businesses that depend on imports from China.
Rick Woldenberg, who runs Learning Resources, an Illinois-based maker of educational toys, said the latest tariffs had already forced him to pause some shipments from China. He called the rates that Mr. Trump had imposed “a joke” and said that even concessions from his suppliers could not make a dent in the fees he would owe to the U.S. government.
Learning Resources contracts with factories in Taiwan, India, Vietnam and other countries to make its products, but China is by far its biggest supplier, as it is for most toymakers. China accounted for two-thirds of all imports of toys and sporting goods to the United States last year.
Learning Resources employs about 500 people, most of them in the United States. It had planned to hire more this year to keep up with its fast-growing business, but has now abandoned some of those plans.
“We’re being asphyxiated by our very own government,” Mr. Woldenberg said.
Mr. Woldenberg said he paid about $2.3 million in tariffs and duties in 2024. This year, he would end up paying more than $100 million if sales somehow kept up with his projections from before the trade war. That’s more than he could pay if he cut every expense in the company other than base payroll.
At this point, Mr. Woldenberg said, the number hardly matters — beyond a certain level, the tariff is simply no longer something anyone in his business can afford to pay.
“He could raise it to 100 billion percent — it doesn’t matter,” he said. “It’s like a legal ban.”
Christophe Lavigne, the president of Highfield, which manufactures boats in China and the United States, said he expected to be subject to 198 percent tariffs on some of his imports, and that he has decided to simply stop his shipments for now.
He said his entire company, and the jobs of his employees and his dealers, was on the line. The pace of change was too fast and unpredictable, he added.
“We cannot adjust our production lines quickly enough,” he said. “Converting our entire supply chain in just two months is not feasible.”
Major multinational corporations have been in a better position to source products from countries besides China, but they too are reeling. Hobby Lobby, the crafting retailer, told vendors on Thursday that it was delaying shipments from China as a result of the escalating trade war, according to correspondence viewed by The New York Times.
The retailer told vendors that the back-and-forth tariffs had resulted in “a rapidly shifting and unpredictable landscape” and that it hoped diplomacy between the United States and China would “yield a more stable and balanced outcome.”
The implications of disrupting business with one of the country’s biggest trading partners have ricocheted through the economy. The dollar fell to a three-year low on Friday, while Treasury yields continued to swing. A measure of consumer sentiment also tumbled, indicating that Americans were becoming nervous about how higher tariffs might affect them.
Mr. Trump abruptly announced on Wednesday a 90-day pause on the “reciprocal” tariffs that he had unveiled the previous week on countries around the world, and which had gone into effect just hours earlier. But the threat of those tariffs, and of retaliation against U.S. exports, continues to hang over the global economy.
It remains to be seen if the United States and China might try to reach some agreement soon. People familiar with the conversations said that members of the White House National Security Council were in touch with counterparts at the Chinese Embassy, and that Cui Tiankai, the former Chinese ambassador, had held meetings in Washington and New York over the past several weeks to discuss the relationship. But there has been little sign of communication between higher-ranking officials in the Trump administration and the Chinese government.
Early in Mr. Trump’s first term, Mr. Xi flew to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida to meet with Mr. Trump for hours, sharing what Mr. Trump later referred to as “the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake you’ve ever seen.” But that did not stop the countries from entering into a bruising trade war. And in his second term, Mr. Trump has been even more emboldened and unpredictable.
Mr. Trump has given few indications publicly of what he wants the Chinese to do. But Trump officials say the issues are well known. In an annual report released March 31, the Office of the United States Trade Representative detailed the trade barriers that U.S. businesses face when selling abroad, dedicating almost 50 of its nearly 400 pages to China.
In recent weeks, in addition to countering Mr. Trump’s tariff threats, China has added some U.S. companies to an unreliable entity list that essentially bars them from doing business in the country. It has also imposed licensing systems to restrict exports of rare earth elements, which are essential for electric cars and other products.
On Friday, as it announced its latest increase in tariffs on American products, the Chinese government said it would not raise the rate further because it was already so high that the number no longer made any difference.
China’s Ministry of Commerce said that the United States had used tariffs “for bullying and coercion” and had ultimately become “a laughingstock.”
“If the U.S. continues its tariff numbers game, China will ignore it,” it said.
China also ratcheted up pressure on U.S. companies as it issued new regulations on Friday that will subject semiconductors made by U.S. firms overseas to higher tariffs.
The move will put pressure on companies like Intel, Global Foundries and others that have U.S. chip factories. It may also encourage chip companies to shift manufacturing out of the United States to maintain access to the Chinese market, where the bulk of global electronics are made.
Paul Triolo, a partner at the business strategy firm DGA-Albright Stonebridge Group, said that electric vehicle companies and others were trying to find alternate supplies of rare earth minerals and magnets after the Chinese restrictions last week.
Some companies will have to stop production after 30 or 60 days, depending on stockpiles and how fast they consume those materials, he said. “It is like a game of musical chairs,” he said. “We are talking to clients scrambling to find alternatives, and there are few.”
Shawn McCreesh, Maggie Haberman, Karen Weise, Tony Romm and Jonathan Swan contributed reporting.
Politics
Trump says Iran missiles ‘aren’t the problem’ after White House made them central to war rationale
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For months, senior Trump administration officials argued that Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal helped shield Tehran’s nuclear ambitions and was a key reason the U.S. launched Operation Epic Fury attacks on the country.
Now, President Donald Trump is suggesting Iran having missiles may not be a problem at all.
“If other countries have them, it’s a little bit unfair for them not to have some. If Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and they all have some, I would say that in relative proportion, I think it’s okay,” Trump said at the G7 international forum Wednesday. “Am I going to let Saudi Arabia have missiles, but (Iran) can’t have them? It doesn’t work that way.”
“Missiles aren’t the problem. They hurt a little location, but they don’t blow up the planet.”
“The Gulf nations will address the nonnuclear issues, as we’ll be talking about the ballistic missiles,” the president added. “And we’ll talk, also, about the terrorist proxies that they have that — we don’t want that to happen.”
A map displays the range of ballistic missiles fired from Iran, highlighting areas within reach. (Fox News)
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Trump made the remarks while discussing whether Iran should be permitted to retain missile capabilities in a news conference at the G7 in Évian-les-Bains, France, just as details of the memorandum of understanding between the U.S. and Iran were being released.
The comments strike a much different tone than arguments repeatedly made by senior administration officials in recent months, who described Iran’s ballistic missile force as both a major threat to regional security and a protective shield for Iran’s nuclear program.
“Iran can never have a nuclear weapon, and we will not allow Iran to hide behind the immunity of a massive short-term ballistic missile inventory, or the ability to make them or launch them,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters in a press conference March 3. “What they are trying to do, and have been trying to do for a very long time, is build a conventional weapons capability as a shield to hide behind.”
TRUMP VOWS TO HIT IRAN ‘VERY HARD’ AFTER OBLITERATING NEARLY ’90 PERCENT’ OF REGIME MISSILES
Other senior officials repeatedly described degrading Iran’s missile capabilities as a central objective of Operation Epic Fury.
In remarks at the White House on March 2, days after the start of the operation, Trump said, “Our objectives are clear. First, we’re destroying Iran’s missile capabilities … and their capacity to produce brand new ones.”
War Secretary Pete Hegseth later said March 4 the mission was “laser-focused” on obliterating Iran’s missiles and the facilities that produce them, while White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the same day one of the administration’s primary goals was to “destroy the regime’s deadly ballistic missiles and completely raze their missile industry to the ground.”
Heavy weapons, including ballistic missiles, air defense systems and unmanned aerial vehicles, are displayed during the 44th anniversary of the eight-year war with Iraq, known as Holy Defense Week, at Baharestan Square in Tehran, Iran, on Sept. 25, 2024. (Photo by Fatemeh Bahrami/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Rubio repeatedly returned to the theme throughout the operation, arguing that degrading Iran’s missile force was necessary to prevent Iran from using conventional military power as cover for a future nuclear weapons program.
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“This is about very specific objectives,” Rubio told reporters on March 30. “The President laid them out on the first night of the operation… Here they are — you should write them down. Number one, the destruction of their air force. Number two, the destruction of their navy. Number three, the severe diminishing of their missile launching capability. And number four, the destruction of their factories so they can’t make more missiles and more drones to threaten us in the future. All of this so that they can never hide behind it to acquire a nuclear weapon. That was our objective from the beginning; that remains our objective now.”
Leavitt made similar comments the same day, saying the objectives of Operation Epic Fury included “destroying their ballistic missiles” and dismantling the infrastructure used to produce them while ensuring Iran never obtains a nuclear weapon.
Trump’s remarks at the G7 also raised questions about the administration’s approach to Iran’s nuclear program, another issue that administration officials had previously described in far less flexible terms.
Trump’s comments also come as the administration pursues a memorandum of understanding with Iran that leaves unresolved one of the central disputes in the nuclear negotiations: the future of Tehran’s enrichment program.
Under the framework agreement unveiled this week, the United States and Iran agreed to spend 60 days negotiating the fate of Iran’s nearly 900-pound stockpile of near-weapons-grade 60% enriched uranium and any future enrichment activities. Administration officials said the minimum outcome under discussion would involve down-blending the material under International Atomic Energy Agency supervision, while acknowledging that key details of a final agreement remain unsettled.
Officials described Iran’s willingness to dilute its stockpile as a significant concession, but also acknowledged that the memorandum does not resolve whether Iran will ultimately be permitted to retain any enrichment capability.
TRUMP REAFFIRMS HARD LINE ON IRAN NUCLEAR DEAL: ‘WILL NOT ALLOW ANY ENRICHMENT OF URANIUM’
President Donald Trump arrives for a gala dinner at the Versailles Palace in Versailles, France. (Nathan Laine/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Trump appeared to strike a more accommodating tone when discussing Iran’s access to nuclear power at the G7.
“It is a little hard, though, when you say that somebody wants it, other people have it, other, adjoining states have it. And you’re not letting them have it for purposes of electricity and things like that,” Trump said. “It’s always a little tough. You have to use a little common sense.”
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The administration had previously drawn a much harder line on Iran’s nuclear program. Special envoy Steve Witkoff said the United States could not allow Iran to retain “even 1 percent” enrichment capability, while White House officials repeatedly described the end of Iranian enrichment as a red line.
The White House referred back to Trump’s recent remarks on missiles when asked for additional comment. “
“We are going to let the President’s comments stand,” a State Department spokesperson said when asked for comment.
The Pentagon could not immediately be reached for comment.
Politics
Commentary: Behested payments aren’t illegal, but they are a problem. Especially for Newsom
After Gov. Gavin Newsom announced this week that the U.S. Department of Justice may be investigating his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, media and pundits pounced on millions in charity payments he has solicited for nonprofits, including ones she is involved in.
Those donations, known as “behested payments,” aren’t illegal in California, but, long before Newsom started asking for them, many have found them unsavory — with good cause. A behest, after all, is by definition a command or at least a strong suggestion.
Anytime a politician is commanding money, regardless of the purpose, there is at least the appearance that the giver — Meta, Google, Blue Shield for example — may expect something in return.
It may seem absurd that the Trump administration could be investigating Newsom for questionable ethics, when Trump has hawked everything from crypto-coins to sneakers from the Oval Office. But the problem Newsom now faces is that behested payments are actually skeevy, and legal or not, they make an excellent target for pummeling the presidential contender. Especially because some of the charities are tied to his wife.
“The Newsom case has blown it wide open, but this has been an issue for years,” Sean McMorris told me. He’s the transparency, ethics and accountability program manager at Common Cause, a nonpartisan organization that has been raising alarms over behested payments for more than a decade.
McMorris said that while these payments don’t violate any laws, they are “ripe for abuse” because companies and people likely aren’t ponying up cash just to be good citizens. If you or I called up PG&E and asked them to give a few million to our favorite cause, I doubt we’d have much luck, even if it involved kittens, puppies or small children in need.
The entire system, McMorris points out, “doesn’t really work unless you’re shaking down people who you know need things from you as a politician.”
Jerry Brown used behested payments to get millions for charter schools he supported. Lesser luminaries such as mayors (including Antonio Villaraigosa, Eric Garcetti and Karen Bass, just to name the last three in L.A.) have used them for all kinds of stuff from jobs programs to fixing up official residences.
And it’s far from a Democratic thing. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, used them to pay for travel and after-school programs. Republican James Gallagher, who recently won a congressional seat, used them to fund computers for schools while he was in the state Legislature. Senate Minority Leader Brian Jones has raised millions, including helping to get $800,000 in donations to fund a replica of a historic ship for the maritime museum in his San Diego district.
Trump himself could be considered king of behested payments, with his corporate-paid ballroom and birthday bash.
Literally, folks, find me a politician with an itty-bitty bit of clout, and I’ll show you a trail of behested payments stretching through their pet projects. For that reason alone, it’s unlikely that California legislators will take any action to curb them, especially now when doing so would appear as a criticism to Newsom and Democrats in general.
And, to be fair, behested payments can do a lot of good. Newsom supercharged behested payments during the pandemic, raising hundreds of millions for programs to get Californians through that social disaster.
For that reason and others, not all experts find them terribly troubling. Jessica Levinson, a Loyola Law School professor with an expertise in election and governance issues, points out that money in politics is nothing new and at least behested payments are (mostly) required to be acknowledged. Anything over $5,000 and the politician has to report it to the California Fair Political Practices Commission, which keeps a public database.
That makes behested payments far more transparent than, say, dark money donations to a mysterious political action committee. And at least the money is going to a good cause, be it historical ships or computers for kids.
“I actually don’t think that they’re the evil mechanism that other people do,” Levinson said. “I mean, my feeling is like, let’s live in reality, right? People are going to want to give as much money to or close to powerful people as possible, and I think that we have a choice between money going to independent expenditure groups or political committees or going to nonprofits.”
So behested payments in and of themselves might not be much of a headache for Newsom. But some of the payments Newsom solicited went to nonprofits Siebel Newsom is involved with, and which have paid her a salary. That proximity is uncomfortable for many of us. There is no distinction for a behest given to a charity with direct ties to the politician, but maybe there should be.
Still, salaries being paid by behested payments also aren’t illegal, and it’s been done before, even by Newsom. Villaraigosa was paid through behested funds for his work as the state “infrastructure czar” back in 2022. Bass considered paying former L.A. Police Commissioner Steve Soboroff through behested-funded nonprofits for his work after the recent fires before public scrutiny pushed him to forgo the funds.
None of that is to say the Newsoms are off the hook in a federal investigation. Newsom’s office said that along with the FBI, agents from the IRS have been knocking on doors and asking questions. All of us — probably the Newsoms included — will just have to wait to see if the fine-tooth combs of the feds pick up any dirt.
If there is any lesson to be learned at this point, it’s about ambition and hubris. Behested payments are easy money for California politicians and business as usual — everyone does it. But maybe they shouldn’t. It’s not black or white.
Newsom is learning quickly what it means to have a powerful enemy like Trump, one who has shown he will use the full power of the American government for his own purposes. One who can tip the scales and slide white to gray and gray to felony.
Federal investigators do not like to come up empty-handed, and the wink-wink nature of behested payments creates just that kind of ambiguity that provides reasonable cause for investigation — a self-inflicted vulnerability that surely has every California politician nervous.
Politics
Double endorsement drama: Trump backs second candidate in red state’s GOP gubernatorial runoff
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President Donald Trump is making an 11th-hour endorsement in the final stretch ahead of Tuesday’s high-profile Republican gubernatorial runoff in solidly red South Carolina, saying he “can’t hurt one of them by only Endorsing the other.”
Trump on Friday took to Truth Social to say that he was supporting longtime South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson and Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette in the battle for the GOP nomination in the race to succeed term-limited Republican Gov. Henry McMaster.
“I can’t hurt one of them by only Endorsing the other, so, therefore, I am going to Endorse, for Governor of South Carolina, both Pam Evette and Alan Wilson!” Trump wrote, adding: “With either one you can’t go wrong.”
The endorsement of Wilson appears to be a move by Trump to hedge his bets, because Trump is already backing Evette, who is also supported by McMaster, a longtime top ally of the president.
The South Carolina runoff had been viewed as the latest test of Trump’s immense grip over the GOP and the power of his endorsements in Republican nominating contests.
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South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson announced his candidacy for governor on Monday, June 23, 2025, accompanied by his family. (Tracy Glantz/The State/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
And his decision to back both Evette and Wilson isn’t the first time he’s made dual endorsements in the same Republican race. He was backing both Gina Swoboda and Jay Feely in next month’s Republican primary in Arizona’s 1st Congressional District before Swoboda dropped out of the congressional race to run for secretary of state.
Most famously, Trump endorsed “ERIC” in the 2022 GOP Senate primary in Missouri, where the two major candidates were Eric Schmitt and Eric Greitens. Both candidates claimed the endorsement, with Schmitt ultimately winning the nomination.
In South Carolina, Trump endorsed Evette late last month, a week and a half before the gubernatorial primary.
Evette finished on top of a crowded field of contenders in the primary election, with Wilson second. The field also included Reps. Nancy Mace and Ralph Norman, and multimillionaire businessman Rom Reddy. Since no candidate won a majority of the vote, as the top two finishers, Evette and Wilson advanced to the June 23 runoff.
Mace and Norman endorsed Wilson after failing to advance to the runoff. And Wilson was also backed a week ago by Sen. Ted Cruz, the conservative firebrand from Texas.
The runoff between Evette and Wilson has become combustible, and in Tuesday’s final debate both candidates launched personal attacks and accused each other of lying and misrepresenting their records.
Wilson has worked to contrast his tenure as attorney general with what he’s argued is Evette’s largely ceremonial role as lieutenant governor. And he has spotlighted his experience as a combat veteran, prosecutor, and the state’s top law enforcement official.
Evette has showcased herself as an outsider and a Trump-endorsed businesswoman, while casting Wilson as a career politician.
Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, who is supporting Wilson and has helped with fundraising, made calls on behalf of Wilson and encouraged the president’s endorsement of the state attorney general, a source familiar told Fox News Digital.
It’s been 28 years since a Democrat won a gubernatorial election in South Carolina, and the winner of the GOP runoff will be considered the clear favorite in the general election against Democratic nominee Jermaine Johnson, a state representative.
South Carolina Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette announces her bid for the Republican nomination for governor at The Smokestack at Judson Mill in South Carolina on July 14, 2025. (Joshua Boucher/The State/Tribune News Service/Getty Images)
The brute force of the president’s endorsement power has been on display in GOP primaries over the past two months, with his candidates ousting incumbents he targeted in showdowns in Indiana, Louisiana, Kentucky and Texas that grabbed plenty of national attention.
But Trump’s endorsement streak in statewide and congressional Republican primaries was snapped three weeks ago when his last minute endorsement of Republican Rep. Randy Feenstra of Iowa in the race to succeed retiring GOP Gov. Kim Reynolds wasn’t enough to propel the three-term congressman to victory.
Feenstra was narrowly edged by Zach Lahn, a businessman, farmer and former political strategist who was backed by the political wings of MAHA — the acronym for the Make America Healthy Again movement aligned with Trump Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — and Turning Point USA, the powerful conservative organization co-founded by the late Charlie Kirk.
Zach Lahn raises his fist in celebration after defeating his primary opponent in Iowa’s GOP gubernatorial race on Tuesday, June 2, 2026. (Zach Lahn for Governor via Facebook)
Trump rebounded a week later, as Evette finished first in the GOP gubernatorial primary and longtime Trump ally Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina won a majority of the vote in the Republican Senate primary, and avoided a runoff.
Graham, who was endorsed by Trump, was facing primary challenges from five candidates, including conservative businessman Mark Lynch, who took aim at the senator over his support for the war in Iran. Lynch was backed by some MAGA leaders who have been critical of the president.
And a couple of days ago, Trump-backed candidates won two of the three top races in Georgia and Alabama, with the one setback coming against a billionaire businessman who shelled out over $100 million of his own money to boost his campaign.
Rep. Barry Moore, a House Freedom Caucus member and longtime Trump supporter who was endorsed by the president, comfortably defeated rival Jared Hudson, a former Navy SEAL sniper who was supported by some top names on the right, in solidly red Alabama’s GOP Senate runoff.
In battleground Georgia’s Republican Senate runoff, an 11th hour endorsement by Trump this past weekend helped boost Rep. Mike Collins, a MAGA champion, to victory over former college football coach Derek Dooley, who was backed by popular conservative Gov. Brian Kemp.
Collins will face Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff in the general election in a race that’s among a handful that will likely decide if the GOP holds its slim majority in the chamber in the midterms.
Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Jackson speaks to supporters at a campaign stop in Alpharetta, Ga., on June 14, 2026. (Paul Steinhauser/Fox News)
Jones regularly showcased his Trump endorsement, but Jackson, who launched his bid in February long after the president had endorsed Jones, repeatedly said that Trump had inspired him to run.
But in Georgia’s GOP gubernatorial runoff, the candidate Trump backed, Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, who was also endorsed by Kemp this past weekend, was defeated by Rick Jackson, who ran as an outsider.
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A Trump political operative, pointing to Tuesday’s loss by Trump-backed Jones, noted that “Rick Jackson set a record for spending in a statewide Republican primary. He spent Tom Steyer level money in a state a fraction of the size of California. That’s going to have an impact.”
And the operative, who asked to remain anonymous to speak more freely, also emphasized that “Rick bearhugged Trump. All of his ads and material was about how he’s going to be Trump’s favorite governor. So the race was not really a referendum on Trump.”
Fox News’ Luke Trevisan contributed to this report
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