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Gillespie feels the Trumpian heat.
Today, Ed Gillespie once again refused to give a straight answer about whether he would campaign with Donald Trump. In an interview with WVEC’s Janet Roach, Gillespie was asked point blank, “would you want him on stage with you campaigning?” His response? “We keep our campaign strategy internal.”
The headline WVEC posted on the interview was brutal — and accurate: “Gillespie won’t say he’s ‘happy’ with Trump endorsement.”
Gillespie’s non-answer came just hours after John Fredericks, Donald Trump’s 2016 Virginia co-chair told the Washington Post that the Gillespie campaign was in “serious talks” about bringing Trump on the campaign trail. Gillespie has been under fire from the hard right for his lukewarm response to the President’s endorsement last week. As The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin wrote today, Gillespie is running a “split-personality campaign” that can’t decide whether to “follow Trump or sorta follow Trump on hot-button issues, especially those that drive the culture wars.”
“The biggest question in Virginia politics right now is whether Donald Trump will campaign with Ed Gillespie,” said DPVA spokesperson Kevin Donohoe. “Ed Gillespie is finding out the hard way that you can’t separate your Trumpian campaign from Donald Trump.”
TRANSCRIPT:
Janet Roach: I know that the President has endorsed you, would you want him on stage with you campaigning?
Ed Gillespie: Well I don’t talk about our campaign strategy with uh anybody let alone the media, not that I wouldn’t be happy to share any insights, uh, but we keep our campaign strategy, you know, until we make announcements on things we keep our campaign strategy internal and think that’s the right way to go about our campaign.
Janet Roach: So if he said I want to come down and campaign with you would you welcome that?
Ed Gillespie: Well look I need all the help I can get obviously we’re in a very close race here and uh you know I appreciate him sending Vice President Pence in to Abington on Saturday and I know it’s gonna be a great rally and people are excited about it and I think it’ll help us. You know we’re in the home stretch here at that point we’ll be at 25 days a little more than three weeks and uh you know it’ll I think energize a lot of volunteers and supporters. And you know our volunteers and supporters are energized all across the Commonwealth
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