ELECTION/GOP/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT/TRUMP PEOPLE: “Rep. Mark Sanford, a South Carolina Republican who’s a critic of President Donald Trump, will lose his GOP primary to his conservative challenger, state Rep. Katie Arrington, CNN projects. The outcome — one that national Republicans working on House races said as recently as Tuesday [6-12-18] morning they did not anticipate — is another sign that GOP primary voters are rejecting lawmakers who break with Trump. Trump endorsed Arrington hours before the polls closed Tuesday in a tweet attacking Sanford for being ‘very unhelpful to me in my campaign to MAGA.’ Last week in Alabama, GOP Rep. Martha Roby — who had called on Trump to exit the 2016 race after the ‘Access Hollywood’ tape became public — was held under 50% in her primary and forced into a runoff..Sanford has at times criticized Trump and didn’t back off that criticism in debates with Arrington. His critiques of Trump have often focused on the President’s style. After the shooting at congressional Republicans’ baseball practice, Sanford on MSNBC said Trump is ‘partially to blame for demons that have been unleashed’ in American politics. In 2017, Sanford told Politico that Trump had ‘fanned the flames of intolerance.’ He also called it ‘befuddling’ that with Trump ‘facts don’t matter.'”
-Eric Bradner, “Trump critic Mark Sanford falls in South Carolina GOP primary,” CNN Politics, CNN.com, June 13, 2018 6:59 am