Credit: Staff Sgt. Alex Broome/U.S. Air Force
President Donald Trump issued a warning to Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick on Wednesday, the opening day of the general election campaign, and cautioned that it “doesn’t work out well” for lawmakers who don’t fully support his agenda.
Speaking to reporters Wednesday morning at Joint Base Andrews before boarding Air Force One for a visit to the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in Connecticut, Trump took aim at the lawmaker’s voting record after a question from Fox News Channel White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich.
While Trump did not refer to Fitzpatrick by name, The Philadelphia Inquirer and media commentator Aaron Rupar identified cited the five-term congressman as the target of the remarks.
Trump mistakenly referred to Heinrich and Fitzpatrick as married. The two are engaged.
“Her husband votes against me all the time. Can you imagine? I don’t know what’s with him. You better ask him what’s with him. Her husband – she’s married to a certain congressman – he likes voting against Trump,” the president said, according to audio from the White House pool reporter.
He added, “You know what happens with that? Doesn’t work out well. I don’t know why he does.”
Trump’s comments came after a candidate he endorsed beat conservative Rep. Thomas Massie Tuesday and less than a week after GOP U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy lost to a Trump-endorsed challenger in Louisiana.
Fitzpatrick has broken ranks with his party and the president on some high-profile votes. He joined a majority of Democrats last week to support a resolution requiring Trump to obtain congressional approval to continue military action against Iran.
Credit: Keith Mellnick/AFGE
Last year, Trump posted on social media that Fitzpatrick owed him for a “big personal favor.”
According to reporting by Philadelphia Magazine, that favor involved a military burial waiver for the congressman’s late brother, Mike Fitzpatrick, a former congressman who died of cancer in 2020. The waiver permitted the elder Fitzpatrick to be interred at Washington Crossing National Cemetery in Upper Makefield Township, a federal site he had helped secure during his time in office.
Despite receiving a robocall endorsement from Trump during his 2020 reelection bid, Fitzpatrick has maintained a distance from the president on the campaign trail. He has not appeared at rallies with Trump over the last decade, and reports indicate he did not vote for Trump in the 2016 or 2024 presidential elections. Fitzpatrick previously told radio station WBCB-AM that he did cast his vote for Trump in 2020.
Fitzpatrick is set to face off against Democratic candidate Bob Harvie, a Bucks County Commissioner and former teacher, in the November election.
Spokespeople for Fitzpatrick and Harvie did not immediately comment on the president’s words.
