Pennsylvania Senate nominee Kathy Barnette said the “knives are coming out” against her as she rocketed in the polls after former President Trump questioned her past.
When underdog Barnette narrowly trailed Trump-backed Dr. Mehmet Oz and before hedge fund manager David McCormick, members of the media began asking, “Who is Kathy Barnette?” as a Washington Examiner piece published Thursday was entitled.
Trump, not a loser, launched an attack on Barnette.
“Kathy Barnette will never be able to win the general election against the radical left Democrats,” Trump said in a statement Thursday afternoon.
“She has many things in her past that have not been properly explained or verified, but if she is able to do so, she will have a wonderful future in the Republican Party — and I will stand by her all the way.”
All but one of Trump’s endorsements have won their primary so far — Nebraska GOP candidate Charles Herbster lost after he faced groping allegations from eight women.
During Trump’s rally on Friday in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, he boasted about his winning streak in the midterms.
“Every single candidate that I supported won their primaries on Tuesday,” Trump said last Friday, referring to the Ohio and Indiana primaries. “We have an overall record of 55 and 0.”
But Barnette brushed off the attack during a campaign stop in Bucks County and said she actually took Trump’s statement as a compliment.
“We know that President Trump has not minced his words,” she told reporters Thursday, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. ‘I think that letter was favorable. And I look forward to working with the President.”
Far-right Barnette would normally be a dream candidate for Donald Trump — she fought hard against the 2020 election results (in which she also lost to Rep. Madeline Dean in a heavily blue Philadelphia district). The conservative commentator says she organized a bus to Washington, DC for the “Save America” rally that preceded the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
But as news outlets began digging into her past, Barnette has resisted any requests for proof that she is who she says she is.
That changed after Trump’s statement. Barnette did a 25-minute interview with conservative radio host Chris Stegall, in which she claimed she was an “open book” but the media hadn’t done its duty of care.
“Kathy Barnette will never be able to win the general election against the radical left Democrats,” Trump said in a statement Thursday afternoon
Trump met in Greensburg last Friday for Dr. Mehmet Oz gathered
“I’ve been running this race for 13 months and suddenly everyone’s like, ‘Who is she?’
“I knocked on mainstream media doors and said: Look at me, talk to me.” Nobody wanted to talk about me. They just wanted to talk about the two rich guys who were beating each other,’ Barnette bleated.
While her opponents have gone to war, Barnette has used her compelling personal story to connect with local voters — she often recounts growing up on a pig farm in Alabama before becoming a veteran and then at two worked in finance companies and is an associate professor of corporate finance and author of Nothing to Lose, Everything to Gain: Being Black and Conservative in America.
While the Washington Examiner claimed Barnette signed on to answer simple questions like the name of the college she taught at and what financial firms she worked for, the Washington Free Beacon claimed her campaign manager abruptly ended a conversation, in which they would have asked for her DD214, a standard document service members receive once they leave the military.
Sean Parnell, who previously won Trump’s support for the GOP Senate race but dropped out amid allegations of domestic violence at the hands of his ex-wife, questioned why Barnette hadn’t provided a public record of her DD214.
“I see a lot of blue checks and others flattering each other [Barnette] but the fact is, apart from what she told you, you don’t really know much. How long has she served? Have you seen their DD214? What was your discharge status? Where did she get her college degree?’ Parnell continued to write Twitter On Wednesday.
Barnette said that while she has a DD214, “nobody walks around with their military records in their back pocket.” She said she spent 10 years in the service from 1990 to 2000, including four in the National Guard and three in the Army Reserve.
She said she taught at Judson University in Illinois, the two financial firms she worked for were AG Edwards and Sons and Bank of America Capital Asset Management, and she graduated from Troy University.
“It shows that the swamp isn’t just occupied by Democrats,” she said, citing questioning by Republicans and right-wing news outlets.
In the fading days leading up to Tuesday’s primary, Barnette oddly rocketed in popularity, sidestepping McCormick and threatening Oz’s number one status in some polls.
She made national headlines when earlier this month she went after Oz over abortion during a debate and revealed she was the product of rape when her mother was just 11 and her father was 21.
Barnette advocated a ban, a total ban on abortion, saying the story of how she came to it showed her the “sacredness of life…regardless of conception.”
Seemingly surprised by the 50-year-old black woman from Philadelphia’s rising popularity, Trump did not attack Barnette at his rally for Oz last week, despite calling McCormick soft on China and a “RINO.”
Barnette’s spending is pocket change compared to Oz and McCormick’s — the two have spent $12.4 million and $11.4 million, respectively, on TV commercials, mostly targeting each other. Barnette has spent $137,000 on television, according to Politico.
Trump’s attacks come a day after Fox News anchor Sean Hannity said comments she had made in the past were troubling.
“But the problem is,” he explained, “we’re now looking at what a Republican Senate seat needs to be if Republicans are ever going to take control of the US Senate.”
Barnette’s checkered past includes many tweets in which she called Obama a “Muslim” and another tweet in which she announced, “Just confronted a Muslim today.”
In other tweets flagged by Inside Elections’ Jacob Rubashkin, Barnette called on the US to ban Islam in 2017, saying that pedophilia is a “cornerstone” of the religion.
Barnette posted a photo of herself in uniform and claimed she spent 10 years in the military, but sometimes used the wrong terminology. She has said at some points that she spent 10 years in the US Army Reserves, but her website claims that she was in the “Armed Forces Reserves,” a branch of the service that doesn’t appear to exist.
On his podcast this week, Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist, called Barnette “pure MAGA — in fact, Kathy Barnette could be ultra-MAGA.”
“Stunning polls came out last night. …Oz and McCormick together I think spent $24 million. 24 million dollars! … And she’s basically dead,” Bannon said Monday on his War Room podcast.