One of the biggest political groups in the country has “mended fences” with Donald Trump as the 2024 general election begins to take shape.
Last summer, Win It Back, a political action committee affiliated with the Club for Growth, spent millions on anti-Trump advertisements in Iowa and South Carolina, hoping to topple the former president.
In September, the Club for Growth’s president, David McIntosh, acknowledged to donors that “all attempts to undermine his conservative credentials on specific issues were ineffective.”
“It was a stunning admission,” reported The New Republic, “and an unsurprising one at the same time. It was also one that revealed just how much influence the Club for Growth—and, by extension, the anti-tax, anti-spending wing that has dominated the conservative movement for more than four decades—has lost.”
On Friday evening, Trump decided to bury the hatchet, speaking at the group’s economic retreat in Palm Springs, Florida.
“Now we’re back in love; we’re in deep, deep love,” he said, according to remarks provided by a source in the room, The Washington Examiner reported.
The Club for Growth, a deep-pocketed group that spends tens of millions to elect conservative candidates each cycle, had forged a close relationship with Trump during his four years in the White House.
But the relationship soured during the midterm elections, when he and the group’s president, David McIntosh, did not see eye to eye in a handful of races. It deteriorated further when a club-affiliated organization spent millions unsuccessfully attempting to challenge Trump’s third run for the White House.
Trump alluded to the races that “broke us up for about a year.”
“Every once in a while, we have an argument. It’s always about who to endorse,” he told the crowd at The Breakers Hotel.
In an interview with Fox News, McIntosh said it was crucial for the GOP to unite to defeat Biden.
“It’s time for Republicans to unite and put our differences aside,” he explained. “We need to work together to make sure Biden is a one-term president. We need to grow our majority in the House and reclaim the majority in the Senate. We need to restore the American Dream, and the only we can do that is by working together.”
He added: “President Trump always says, ‘When Trump and the Club for Growth are together, we always win.’ And together we are going to win back the White House and more this November.”
Trump has so far dominated the Republican primary and currently leads in polling against Joe Biden.
