Former President Trump has the proven track record to get the country back on track as Republicans aim to retake the Senate in 2024, Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN) said during a recent appearance on Breitbart News Saturday.
Hagerty is one of nearly one dozen senators who has endorsed Trump’s 2024 presidential bid and said supporting him this time is “certainly not a hard decision at all.”
“I served in the Trump administration,” he said, pointing to his status as the U.S. ambassador to Japan.
“I worked very closely with President Trump and we got some amazing things done in the Indo-Pacific region. If you think about it when we arrived, potentials were so high with North Korea. We got that calmed down,” noting the two meetings with the leaders which has “never happened before.”
“We saw stability in the region because people respected America again,” he said, explaining that we are moving to a “more destabilized world in every corner of the world” under President Biden’s leadership.
“You look at what’s happening in the Taiwan Strait right now. Very, very dangerous situation. You look at the Middle East. It’s just a catastrophe right now that they’re embracing Iran and turning against Israel every chance they get. The situation Ukraine, every American is watching this,” he said, concluding it would not have happened if Trump was still in office.
Hagerty also said the war on American energy did not have to happen, either, and would not have if Trump remained in office.
“We need someone like President Trump that actually got us energy independent. You remember that? We’re in a far different place,” he said, concluding that “we need to get back” to that.
“President Trump really has had the track record of doing it,” he said.
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Hagerty also talked about the importance of down ticket races, as he is heading up the ground game operations for the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) in 2024. He pointed out that Democrats have far more seats up for reelection in 2024 than Republicans. Of the 33 seats up, only ten are held by GOP senators. He said Republicans are going to work hard to ensure voters do not cross over to the other side, but he also said he believes Republicans have “great chances in the states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nevada, [and] Arizona.
“We’ll continue to shift this as we see how candidates are faring and how the polls are adjusted, but my job – and this is getting back to what you originally asked. My job is is about the ground game. It’s about the operations that are running on the ground. It’s not about selecting the best candidate. It’s not about what our message is,” Hagerty said, pushing the importance of voter registration and other methods.
“The moment that we can reach out and request absentee ballots, military ballots, vote by mail ballots, we need to be requesting,” he said.
“We need to be getting our people to the polls early. Republicans tend to like to vote in person rather than by mail. That’s fine. A lot of these states now allow in person early voting. Let’s get them to the polls early. Let’s not wait until Election Day. There’s so much risk waiting up until the day of the election, even though I like to do it, I’m sure most people listening like to don’t take that risk. Let’s get these votes banked now,” he added.