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Does Cory Gardner have a breaking point when it comes to Trump? The political climate suggests he better not.

Jesse Paul, Colorado Sun
U.S. Senator Cory Gardner.

In 2016, when Donald Trump ran for president, Colorado’s Republican U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner didn’t mince his words about the GOP nominee: “I cannot and will not support someone who brags about degrading and assaulting women.”

Gardner was reacting to an “Access Hollywood” recording of the candidate bragging about sexual assault. He said he didn’t vote for Trump, instead casting a ballot for Mike Pence, now vice president, as a write-in candidate. 

Flash forward to today, and Gardner’s political world is now spinning in the opposite direction. 



Gardner made an early endorsement of Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign. He has a direct line of communication to the president — they speak on the phone fairly regularly. And he has refused to answer questions about whether Trump’s interactions with Ukraine’s president — which are now the subject of impeachment proceedings — were wrong.

Gardner is mostly mum on how and why his stance on the president has evolved over the past three-plus years, but political math provides important context as to why he may not have a choice, politically speaking, when it comes to his support for Trump.

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