Some headline writer needs their head examined:
Trump beats a longtime adversary with a late Georgia endorsement, and other election takeaways [CNN]
This is a reference to Rep Collins defeating former football coach Derek Dooley in the Georgia primary runoff. Governor Kemp (R-GA) had endorsed the latter, while President Trump endorsed the former.
Except Trump didn’t. Not until 14 June. The primary date was 16 June.
Endorsements are traditionally a manner in which one political participant, whether it be a powerful individual such as a (ex-) governor or a union leader, confirms the ideological congruency of the endorsee to the endorser, and that the endorsee is competent to the job. Governor Kemp has been campaigning for Dooley since August of 2025, when he endorsed Dooley.
President Trump has replaced that definition with a definition that feels like a weapon, because he has proclaimed many times, on many occasions, that those he endorses win, and win by a landslide. This is false, of course, with his endorsement of failed Iowa gubernatorial candidate Randy Feenstra (R-IA) as just one example. But it does result in Republicans often doing the dolphin dance, looking for that faux-magical endorsement by putting themselves in front of the camera, often at Fox News, in order to catch and hold
So this was a clash of a callow President’s “philosophy,” if sops to his ego combined with ties binding winning candidates to his ankles qualifies as a philosophy, with the old definition of a politician simply saying he likes a candidate’s ideology, competency, merit, and bona fidēs.
Obviously, the two should not be compared; when Trump is pushed out of office, his definition should be discarded by everyone, no matter how much he trumpets its importance.
And CNN really blew it with that headline.
