(PatriotWise.com)- Utah Senator Mike Lee received an endorsement from former President Donald Trump recently, and that angered Lee’s top challenger for re-election, Evan McMullin.
On Friday, McMullin launched an attack ad via tweet that questioned Lee’s role in trying to get the 2020 presidential election overturned. The video ad shows McMullin urging Lee to finally “come clean” about his role in the infamous attacks on the Capitol building on January 6, 2021.
The challenger also said that Lee should cooperate with the special House panel that’s investigating the Capitol riot.
As McMullin said in the ad:
“Senator Mike Lee, once a constitutional conservative, now has the endorsement of a wicked man who tried to dismantle our republic and stay in power against the people’s will. Lee sacrificed his honor and values to serve him at the expense of Utah and our nation. I will not.”
It’s not a surprising strategy that McMullin is trying to employ — attempting to sway voters who might not be pro-Trump into ousting an incumbent who is aligned with the former president. In Utah, though, that strategy may not really be necessary.
It’s a heavily conservative state, of course, but voters there haven’t backed Trump with the same vigor that other Republicans in other states have. In fact, the state’s other senator, Mitt Romney, is seen as one of the biggest detractors from Trump in the GOP.
That has raised questions about Lee’s own prospects for winning re-election, since he’s seen as one of the strongest allies of the former president.
Trump has praised Lee in recent times, saying he’s done an “outstanding job” serving Utah over his 11 years in office. The two haven’t always seen eye-to-eye on everything, though.
Still, Lee had high words of praise for Lee recently, while also attacking Romney. The former president said of Lee:
“There is no greater voice for our military, our vets, law and order, or Second Amendment, which is under total siege. He loves his state, and is by far the superior senator there — not even a contest!”
Romney, of course, voted to convict Trump in both of his impeachment trials.
McMullin has been on the opposite side of Trump for a while now. Back in 2016, he launched a political bid that took a stance against Trump. Lee backed McMullin then, but then he ended up supporting Trump once he was re-elected.
Trump, naturally, has poked fun of McMullin, calling him “McMuffin” when speaking about him. Recently, he said:
“All you have to do is read the ads about McMuffin in the last campaign to know what he stands for. He is laughed at by all and would be a disaster for the state — and you can’t have two such senators like that at one time,” again making passing reference to Romney.
McMullin is an independent, and he’s gotten some support from prominent liberal politicians in Utah. We’ll have to wait and see whether that’s enough to unseat Lee come November.
