Peter Meijer, a former one-term Republican congressman, announced he would seek the open U.S. Senate seat in Michigan this year on Monday and was quickly met with scorn from the state’s hard-right Republican Party.

“Peter Meijer voted to impeach President Trump. Remember that,” wrote the Michigan GOP on its official Twitter account Monday. The state party quickly deleted the tweet and apologized, releasing a statement saying, “The Michigan Republican Party remains neutral and supportive of all Republic Primary candidates.”

However, the message was very clear from the Michigan GOP and seemed to already resonate with the candidate as Meijer vowed to support former President Donald Trump if he were the Republican presidential nominee in 2024.

“Would you say, look, maybe you made the vote in haste. Is there anything you can say to Trump supporters? Because, look, it’s going to be an awfully hard sell for you to go to the Trump supporters and say with your hat in hand, say, look, this is what happened. This is why I did it. Would you do it again?” asked Steve Gruber on Real America’s Voice.

“I stand by it. My regret is that we had to have the vote in the first place,” Meijer replied, adding:

And, obviously, I regret not being in the 118th Congress where we actually had a Republican majority and couldn’t move forward to have that same degree of accountability brought towards President Biden, who has done far greater things to bring disgrace to that office. But again, my view on January 6th comes from being there, comes from the frustration that I felt at seeing an embarrassment both at home rivaled only by the Afghanistan withdrawal that came a short eight months later in terms of damaging our credibility on the national stage.

When it comes to 2024, I’m going to support the Republican nominee, and that’s going to make a lot of the Lincoln Project and NeverTrump folks very, very unhappy. But I will support that Republican nominee because we need to make Joe Biden a one-term president. And in reality, whoever wins this seat is going to be in office for two years after whoever the next president is, whether it’s President Trump in his second nonconsecutive term, as seems increasingly likely given the polls or if it’s President Biden who will also be a lame duck in a second term.

Meijer lost his 2022 GOP reelection primary bid, largely as a result of his vote to impeach Trump, despite a huge fundraising and name recognition advantage. Meijer, an heir to a Midwestern grocery store empire, will go into the crowded senate primary field with significant advantages, but likely face the same struggles in the GOP that prevented him from running for reelection.

“My wife and I prayed hard about this race and how we can best serve our state and our nation. We considered every aspect of the campaign, and are confident we have the best chance of taking back this seat for the Republicans and fighting hard for a conservative future,” Meijer said in a statement on Twitter Monday, seeming to acknowledge the difficult road ahead.

Watch the clip above.

The post GOP Senate Candidate Says He Stands By His Vote to Impeach Trump Over Jan. 6, But Will Still Support Him In 2024 first appeared on Mediaite.

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