Tea Party leader Bill Hennessy appeared on the Breitbart News Daily show on SiriusXM radio to discuss his new book about why he "did a complete 180" on Donald Trump, and derided the Never Trump movement as "silly."
"You can't really be Never Trump and Never Hillary. One of the two will be the next president of the United States," Hennessy told host Stephen K. Bannon on Wednesday. "If you're trying to play this cutesy game — I'm being true to some principles that allows me to do things that throw the election to Hillary Clinton — you're going to bear responsibility for what she does."
Trump's support among Tea Party followers was split between him and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz during the Republican primaries, and many tea party members skipped the party's convention because Trump was the expected nominee.
"We just witnessed the coronation of King Trump," Toby Marie Walker told Cleveland.com two weeks ago. "This is my first convention and this is my last convention. I don't want to be a part of something that doesn't want me."
Walker, a leader of the Waco Tea Party and a Cruz supporter, was an alternate delegate who was bound to cast her vote for Trump, but she chose to skip the convention.
"We knew we were never going to get Ted, but I would rather lose it knowing that we had been in the minority," she said. "This is a tyranny. This shouldn't be managed the board room, this is a (political) party."
But the tea party may be losing support, as Rep. Tim Huelskamp of Kansas lost his bid for reelection on Tuesday, according to The Chicago Tribune, to an obstetrician named Roger Marshall. He claimed that Huelskamp's anti-establishment attitude lost him his seat on the House Agriculture Committee, which is crucial for west Kansas.
Huelskamp, a Cruz supporter, also had refused to back Trump, The Atlantic reports.
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