A pact appears to have been reached between the Club for Growth and former president Trump.
Trump and Club for Growth President David McIntosh, who had been at odds for the last year, reportedly had dinner together on Wednesday night at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property in Palm Beach, Florida. On Saturday, McIntosh will also be travelling to South Carolina with Trump as the former president campaigns there in the lead-up to the Republican primary on February 24.
In their long-running, tumultuous relationship, Trump and the conservative group have recently taken a new approach, reconciling. Over the past year, tensions between the two camps have been at an all-time high due to an outside group’s unsuccessful multi-million dollar TV ad campaign targeting early primary states and linked with the Club for Growth. After realising it wasn’t having any effect, the Club-linked group stopped fighting Trump in August of last year.
As Trump tightens his grip on the Republican nomination, these actions show that the GOP is rallying behind him. Several of the former president’s main opponents have endorsed him, and he has started to draw contributors who were on the fence about supporting him before.
When the anti-tax organisation spent extensively to prevent Trump from obtaining the Republican nominee in 2016, the complicated connection between the two began. However, during Trump’s presidency, he and McIntosh—a former congressman from Indiana—became friends, and that friendship continued into Trump’s post-White House years, when McIntosh became an informal adviser.
But Trump and McIntosh fell out during the Ohio Senate primary of 2022 because Trump supported J.D. Vance and the Club for Growth supported Josh Mandel, who was running against Vance. When it became clear that the Club for Growth was still supporting Mandel, Trump sent a risqué text message to McIntosh through his assistant during the race. In the end, Vance would be elected president.
In an interview with reporters early the following year, McIntosh suggested that Republicans be receptive to a different candidate than Trump in the 2024 race. Not long after that, the Club for Growth invited other Republican presidential candidates to a donor retreat it was holding, but not Trump.
In July 2023, the Club for Growth established an affiliate that opposed Trump. Trump slammed the organisation, referring to it as the “Club for No Growth.”