President Donald Trump on Friday demonstrated he’s willing to change course — if it will keep control of Congress from changing hands.
Less than a month after very publicly supporting Republican Rep. Jeff Hurd’s primary opponent, Trump used a post on the social media platform Truth Social to announce he is now backing Hurd’s re-election in Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District — and opening a spot in the administration for Hurd’s challenger.
At a time when the GOP majority in Congress can be counted with one hand, and every Republican vote counts, it’s likely a sign that Trump is trying to cut down potential losses in November’s midterms.
“Every true MAGA supporter and Republican, if they truly care about saving our Country, will do everything in their power to unify together, and defeat the Crazed Radical Left Democrats this November,” Trump wrote in the post.
In Trump’s case, that means backing away from a position announced less than a month ago, when he supported Hurd’s challenger in a blistering, Feb. 21 Truth Social post that blasted Hurd as a “RINO” — or Republican in Name Only — and accused Hurd of being “more interested in protecting Foreign Countries that have been ripping us off for decades than he is the United States of America.”
The post specifically criticized Hurd for failing to support Trump’s tariff policies on foreign goods entering the country.
In the same post, Trump endorsed Hope Scheppelman, a Navy veteran and critical care nurse practitioner challenging Hurd for the GOP nomination in the district.
That endorsement is no longer operative.
Trump wrote that he had met with Scheppelman and her husband “to discuss various opportunities to serve our Country in a different capacity than her current run for the United States Congress.”
One of those opportunities will be serving in the Trump administration in an as-yet-undetermined role.
Kadia Goba, a congressional reporter for The Washington Post, called Trump’s turnaround a “stunning reversal.”
Stunning reversal here as Trump re-endorses Rep. Jeff Hurd of Colorado after pulling support weeks ago to back his opponent
Hurd voted to rescind the president’s war powers ability & lobbied lawmakers to overturn the president’s veto of a Colorado water project this cycle pic.twitter.com/Nk5uUNF4pz
— Kadia Goba (@kadiagoba) March 20, 2026
It might not be so stunning, considering what’s at stake for Trump in November.
Democratic control of the House of Representatives for his final two years in the White House could well mean a re-enactment of the final two years of his first term, when congressional sniping and incessant investigations culminated in Trump’s first impeachment over a telephone conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Continued Republican control of the House, on the other hand, will mean Trump in the driver’s seat on legislative issues as well as in the executive branch.
As Politico noted, Hurd won his seat in 2024 by only 5 percentage points. A difficult GOP primary race could leave the winning candidate — no matter who it might be — too weakened to take on a Democratic opponent in November, resulting in Republicans losing a seat they can ill afford.
That, in turn, could lead to the GOP losing the House to Democrats, which Trump’s post described in disastrous terms.
“If they seize power, they will spend every minute trying to ‘turn back the clock’ to Record Inflation, Skyrocketing Prices, High Taxes, Open Borders, Men in Women’s Sports, Transgender for Everybody, Corrupt Elections, ‘Get Out of Jail Free Cards’ for Violent Criminals, and Terrorists, and much more —,” Trump wrote.
“We cannot let this happen!”
Meanwhile, two Democrats so far are competing for their party’s nomination in Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District, according to Ballotpedia:
Alex Kelloff, a career IT specialist and a founder of the digital investment company SDC Capital Partners, and Dwayne Romero, a West Point graduate who was awarded a Bronze Star in the Gulf War of 1990-1991 and now owns a property management firm in Colorado.
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