A new video by Gov. Henry McMaster (SC) exposes the Never Trump forces funding his primary challenger Catherine Templeton in South Carolina’s upcoming gubernatorial election.
The video, obtained exclusively by Breitbart News, shows Templeton’s ads as funded by the American Future Fund, a group that funded multiple attack ads against Donald Trump in the recent presidential election.
In 2016 alone, the organization spent $6.7 million in attacks against Trump, describing him as a “fraud,” “a phony,” and a “B.S. artist.”
“It should come as no surprise that one of the most anti-Trump groups of the 2016 election is supporting Catherine Templeton, who is known for flip-flopping and twisting the truth,” said McMaster’s campaign spokeswoman Caroline Anderegg in a statement to Breitbart News.
She added, “Henry McMaster stood by our president while he sustained a barrage of attacks and insults from Catherine and her allies, and he stands with our president now. After seeing this group’s bogus Trump attacks once before, South Carolina voters know better than to trust them to tell them the truth about Catherine Templeton.”
As Lieutenant Governor of South Carolina, McMaster was the first statewide elected official anywhere in America to endorse Trump’s candidacy while that statewide officeholder was currently in office. McMaster later replaced Nikki Haley as South Carolina’s governor when she was appointed to her U.N Ambassador’s role at the beginning of the administration.
McMaster was a standout on the campaign trail with Trump in the “First in the South” state of South Carolina in the primaries, when establishment forces were still shocked by his New Hampshire win. He campaigned up and down South Carolina with Trump, solidifying the now president’s second state win in the primaries, clearing a glide path for Trump to the nomination as he gobbled up delegates in other states easily after winning both New Hampshire and South Carolina.
McMaster was even at Trump’s side when Trump was battling with the Republican National Committee (RNC) while the official party structure was resisting his eventual nomination – at a time during a press conference in Hanahan, South Carolina, that was memorable for Trump praising Breitbart News’s Washington Political Editor Matthew Boyle.
Last October, Trump returned the favor by endorsing McMaster at a packed rally in Greenville, South Carolina, describing him as a “compatriot” who was “going to be for many years a great governor.”
“He does some special job, and he does it with his heart,” Trump said.
While McMaster was supporting Trump, Templeton was an early supporter of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush in the 2016 campaign and criticized Trump for supposedly putting off women leaders.
“There are leaders all over South Carolina, especially women leaders, who are looking at the rhetoric and antics of Donald Trump, and are being turned off,” she said at the time.
Bush, embarrassingly, dropped out of the campaign after losing South Carolina miserably in 2016. Templeton did eventually endorse Trump against Hillary Clinton in the general election.
More recently, Templeton expressed her admiration for former Breitbart News executive chair and chief strategist Steve Bannon, describing him as a “brilliant,” “high-level thinker,” who has become “the voice of the rest of us.”
And, now, she claims to be in line with President Trump and a supporter of his, despite her history–and despite these ads from the anti-Trump American Future Fund. The ads were so bad to Trump in 2016 that he even tweeted a nasty attack about them at Rubio:
Phony Rubio commercial. I could have settled, but won't out of principle! See student surveys. https://t.co/KKHiBH554d
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 29, 2016
The group now backing Templeton spent millions against Trump calling him all sorts of names in a series of vicious ads in early 2016.
“Trump is just a fraud, a misrepresentation, a B.S. artist. America, don’t make the same mistake I made with Donald Trump,” a narrator says in one ad, for instance.
“Donald Trump is a phony,” another ad says. “Stop him now.”
The South Carolina governor’s race, despite Trump’s backing of McMaster, has become crowded, wherein Templeton, Lt. Gov. Kevin Bryant, and businessman John Warren have each entered the field attempting to challenge McMaster for the GOP nomination. The Republican nominee, since it is deep red South Carolina, is expected to easily win the general election.
Follow Ben Kew on Facebook, Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at bkew@breitbart.com.
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