This morning, POLITICO’s Morning Score reported that Aaron Flint, the Republican running to succeed Ryan Zinke in Montana’s First Congressional District, has quietly stripped a prominent banner touting President Trump’s “complete and total endorsement” from his campaign website since clinching his primary. Flint becomes the latest House Republican to distance himself from Trump ahead of the midterms, alongside Mike Beltran in FL-14 and Ralph Alvarado in KY-06.
Flint leaned hard into his Trump endorsement to win a competitive June primary, running ads featuring Trump himself praising Flint from the Oval Office. Once the primary was behind him, POLITICO found, the campaign quietly rebuilt its own homepage to bury it.
Read more about Flint running away from Trump:
- Even Republicans in fairly red territory aren’t looking to hype their Trump ties. Aaron Flint, the Republican running in MT-01, where GOP Rep. Ryan Zinke won by nine points in 2024, ran multiple campaign ads highlighting Trump’s endorsement ahead of the June primary. One ad featured Trump speaking directly from the Oval Office about his “complete and total endorsement” of Flint.
- Flint also once plastered the Trump endorsement across his campaign website, but after the primary, Flint’s campaign has minimized Trump’s endorsement on the site. Archives of the campaign’s website from May show the text of Trump’s social media endorsement displayed on the site’s homepage and a banner at the top of the site labeling Flint as “endorsed by President Trump!” Both of those elements have since been removed. A large graphic and pull-quote highlighting Trump’s endorsement have been replaced by a slideshow at the bottom of the page cataloging endorsements Flint has received, including from Trump as well as local elected officials and unions.
- Like most other Republicans in competitive races, neither of Flint’s two general election TV ads so far mention Trump. In one ad, produced in coordination with the NRCC, Flint promises to promote skilled trades to create jobs that “China can’t steal and AI can’t replace.” Another ad features a voiceover saying that Flint “understands Montanans are struggling.”
- Campaigns commonly pivot messaging between primaries and general elections, and candidates in the same party as the sitting president often avoid nationalizing their races. But the GOP convention in Dallas last week crystallized Trump’s insistence on being a central character in the midterms, despite his low approval.
- Other House GOP candidates have scrubbed Trump from their campaign websites as well, including Mike Beltran in FL-14 and Ralph Alvarado in KY-06, although some candidates who downplayed Trump’s endorsement on their website spoke at the RNC convention in Dallas alongside Trump last week.
Published: Sep 15, 2026