Former Fox News host Eric Bolling is rumored to be mulling a run for Congress in South Carolina.
Sources knowledgeable of the situation said they did not know for which district Bolling would run, according to Politico. Two possibilities include a primary challenge against Rep. Tom Rice, who voted to impeach President Donald Trump, or Rep. Nancy Mace.
Bolling, who lives in Charleston, did not specifically address Politico’s report, but he told the outlet, “I absolutely love living in South Carolina and taking time to listen to voters (and viewers), and what I hear is total frustration with President Biden’s aggressive progressive agenda. South Carolina is conservative, and South Carolinians deserve conservative representation in D.C.”
Bolling has considered entering the political arena before, having moved to South Carolina with the possibility of taking on Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), though he ultimately decided against it. Bolling, who used to be a Wall Street trader, worked at Fox News for 11 years until leaving the network amid sexual misconduct allegations that he has denied. He supported Trump and interviewed him several times.
Trump has expressed his intention to use primary races to derail Republicans such as Rice who did not support him. Mace, though she opposed impeachment, nevertheless cooled toward the former president in the wake of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
During his recent speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Orlando, Florida, Trump called out by name the politicians he intended to go after with his well-funded Save America PAC.
As The Daily Wire reported:
President Donald Trump announced on Sunday during his speech at CPAC that moving forward, he was going to work on getting certain kinds of Republicans elected to office, and he named specific Republicans in the House and the Senate that he will likely be targeting.
“I will be actively working to elect strong, tough, and smart Republican leaders,” Trump said. “Now more than ever is the time for tough, strong, and energetic Republican leaders who have spines of steel. We need strong leadership. We cannot have leaders who show more passion for condemning their fellow Americans than they have ever shown for standing up to Democrats, the media, and the radicals who want to turn America into a socialist country.”
“Instead of attacking me and, more importantly, the voters of our movement, top establishment Republicans in Washington should be spending their energy in opposing Biden, Pelosi, Schumer, and the Democrats,” Trump continued. “I’ve said to some of them, I said, you know, during the Obama years and now during Biden, if you spent the same energy on attacking them, you’d actually be successful.”
“The Democrats don’t have grandstanders like Mitt Romney, little Ben Sasse, Richard Burr, Bill Cassidy, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Pat Toomey,” Trump said. “And in the house, Tom Rice, South Carolina, Adam Kinzinger, Dan Newhouse, Anthony Gonzalez, that’s another beauty, Fred Upton, Jaime Herrera Beutler, Peter Meijer, John Katko, David Valadao, and of course the warmonger, a person that loves seeing our troops fighting, Liz Cheney, how about that?”
Related: Trump Names Republicans In House And Senate That He Is Going After, Gives Special Attention To One