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In this daily series, Newsweek explores the steps that led to the January 6 Capitol Riot.

Donald Trump entered the holiday season as fixated as ever on overturning the results of the election. "VOTER FRAUD IS NOT A CONSPIRACY THEORY, IT IS A FACT!!!" he tweeted on December 24.

The night before, Trump flew to Florida to spend the holidays at his Mar-a-Lago home. Flying with him on Air Force One: Rudy Giuliani, the president's Number One cheerleader, who was spending Christmas with the Trumps.

Upon arriving at his golf club that Thursday, the president "received a warm welcome from members," according to CNN. Fellow golfers were excited that Trump wasn't giving up the fight.

Vice President Mike Pence was on Trump's mind, though. The two men were fundamentally different. Pence, deeply conservative and a conscientious holder of his office, was never close to or buddies with the showman.

Donald Trump tweeted on Christmas Eve: "Mike Pence MUST do this ... defend our Constitution from our enemies: Foreign: China, Russia, Iran..." This was the only way for Trump to directly communicate; their meetings at this point were formal and perfunctory.

Pence was reaching out to everyoneConstitutional lawyers, former vice presidents, Congressional leadersand every one of them told him he had no role to play in the vote count on January 6, other than the pro forma ceremonial role. The Constitution was clear: Congress certified the electoral votes that had already been counted. As president of the Senate, Pence presided. But he didn't have to. Vice President Hubert Humphrey didn't preside, turning over the duties to the President Pro Tempore, the senior member.

Trump and his supporters, of course, had their own theory of what was possible, the Pence could reject the electors in swing states, substituting in Trump electors. It was preposterous, but Trump and the campaign produced their own experts, lawyers, and kibitzers who happily contradicted the facts, making up their own path to reversing the election when the Joint Session of Congress met.

What was Donald Trump to think? Though Pence, by all accounts, was struggling with the personal and ethical dilemma of making the final break with Donald Trump, he also continued to publicly support the president, creating the illusion that he might come through. Speaking to a group of young conservatives in Florida earlier in the week, Pence exhorted the crowd to "keep fighting until every legal vote is counted" and "every illegal vote is thrown out."

"Stay in the fight for election integrity. Stay in the fight to defend all we've done," Pence said. "Four more years!"

"Stop the steal!" the crowd chanted.

Official Washington"the swamp," the high-and-mighty, as John Bolton called them, the lawyers and lobbyists, the bureaucracyconcluded overwhelmingly that the election was over. Donald Trump and his supporters were merely bellowing conspiracies and fantastic claims, they thought. It was all theater to stoke the president's ego. Donald Trump was responsible for riling people up, they thought, dismissing the 70 million who had voted for him as ignorant, illiterate, ridiculous.

And yet, outside Washington, the national angst was deep and there was genuine confusion and concern. It wasn't just a group of young Republicans. It wasn't just Trump's golf club. Take, for instance, the experience of Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, when he went back to Utah for Christmas.

According to Bob Woodward and Robert Costa's "Peril," Senator Lee "began hearing from friends, neighbors, family members about the election being stolen ... People who would not be regarded as being on the fringe of societymayors, city council men, county commissioners, sheriffssaid that were expecting to go back to Washington and 'stop the steal.' Text messages, social media posts, people who got his phone number wanting to know what was going on. How was the election stolen? What are you going to do?"

"Cancel culture" Trump tweeted, railing against Twitter for "going wild with their flags, trying hard to suppress even the truth. Just shows how dangerous they are, purposely stifling free speech. Very dangerous for our Country."

"This is how Communism starts," Trump raged.

Donald Trump's army was ready to go to war for their president, to prevent communism, to defend the nation. They sought a sense of patriotic duty, expressed in their quasi-military pretensions and even their dress.

"Who wants to go to dc?" Christopher Quaglin posted on Facebook on December 24, "I have an extra double twin bed available."

"Driving in with my wife from Berryville VA," Donavan Ray Crawl posted on Facebook. "Meeting up with Oathkeepers from North Carolina and Patriot group from the Shenandoah Valley."

Ronald Mele posted on Facebook that he and three friends were thinking of renting a car to drive cross-country, "arriving January 5 to support our President on the 6th and days to follow just in case." The following day, he explained in another Facebook post that he was "going to rent a suburban. Team of four rotating eight hours each. Need room for the 'gear.'"

"[I]t is IMPERATIVE that we let our elected federal officials know in both the Senate and the house that we will not be voting for them again if they do not support our President Trump on January 6th when they are counting Electoral College votes ..." Kenneth Reda posted.

Benjamin Burlew spoke to a family member on a call that day as well, saying he planned to "storm the Capitol."

"By bullet or ballot," Ryan Taylor Nichols posted on Facebook. "Restoration of the Republic is Coming."

"That's my basement gun room," Quaglin captioned a photo. "I have been planning for this since fucking Bush left office and Obama came in"

All six were later arrested for their roles on January 6.

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Mike Pence Fed the Illusion that Donald Trump Might Prevail - Newsweek

In his nine months in office, Attorney General Merrick Garland has done a great deal to restore integrity and evenhanded enforcement of the law to an agency that was badly misused for political reasons under his predecessor. But his place in history will be assessed against the challenges that confronted him. And the overriding test that he and the rest of the government face is the threat to our democracy from people bent on destroying it.

Mr. Garlands success depends on ensuring that the rule of law endures. That means dissuading future coup plotters by holding the leaders of the insurrection fully accountable for their attempt to overthrow the government. But he cannot do so without a robust criminal investigation of those at the top, from the people who planned, assisted or funded the attempt to overturn the Electoral College vote to those who organized or encouraged the mob attack on the Capitol. To begin with, he might focus on Mark Meadows, Steve Bannon, Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman and even Donald Trump all of whom were involved, in one way or another, in the events leading up to the attack.

Almost a year after the insurrection, we have yet to see any clear indicators that such an investigation is underway, raising the alarming possibility that this administration may never bring charges against those ultimately responsible for the attack.

While the Justice Department has filed charges against more than 700 people who participated in the violence, limiting the investigation to these foot soldiers would be a grave mistake: As Joanne Freeman, a Yale historian, wrote this month about the insurrection, Accountability the belief that political power holders are responsible for their actions and that blatant violations will be addressed is the lifeblood of democracy. Without it, there can be no trust in government, and without trust, democratic governments have little power.

The legal path to investigate the leaders of the coup attempt is clear. The criminal code prohibits inciting an insurrection or giving aid or comfort to those who do, as well as conspiracy to forcibly prevent, hinder or delay the execution of any law of the United States. The code also makes it a crime to corruptly impede any official proceeding or deprive citizens of their constitutional right to vote.

Based purely on what we know today from news reports and the steady stream of revelations coming from the House select committee investigating the attack, the attorney general has a powerful justification for a robust and forceful investigation into the former president and his inner circle. As White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows was intimately involved in the effort to overturn the election. He traveled to Georgia last December, where he apparently laid the groundwork for the phone call in which the president pressured Georgias secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to find 11,780 votes. Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio reportedly promoted a scheme to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to reject duly certified Joe Biden electors. And from their war room at the Willard Hotel, several members of the presidents inner circle hatched the legal strategy to overturn the results of the election.

The president himself sat back for three hours while his chief of staff was barraged with messages from members of Congress and Fox News hosts pleading with him to have Mr. Trump call off the armed mob whose violent passion he had inflamed. That evidence, on its own, may not be enough to convict the former president, but it is certainly enough to require a criminal investigation.

And yet there are no signs, at least in media reports, that the attorney general is building a case against these individuals no interviews with top administration officials, no reports of attempts to persuade the foot soldiers to turn on the people who incited them to violence. By this point in the Russia investigation, the special counsel Robert Mueller had indicted Paul Manafort and Rick Gates and secured the cooperation of George Papadopoulos after charging him with lying to the F.B.I. The media was reporting that the special counsels team had conducted or scheduled interviews with Mr. Trumps aides Stephen Miller and Mr. Bannon, as well as Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Of course, there is no way to know for sure whether Mr. Garlands Department of Justice is investigating the leaders of the attack behind closed doors. Justice Department policy does not permit announcing investigations, absent exceptional circumstances. Mr. Garland, unlike his predecessor, plays by the book, keeping quiet about investigations until charges are filed. But the first of the rioters to plead guilty began cooperating with the Justice Department back in April. If prosecutors have been using their cooperation to investigate the top officials and operatives responsible for the siege of the Capitol and our democracy, there would likely be significant confirmation in the media by now.

It is possible that the department is deferring the decision about starting a full-blown investigative effort pending further work by the House select committee. It is even conceivable that the department is waiting for the committees final report so that federal prosecutors can review the documents, interviews and recommendations amassed by House investigators and can consider any potential referrals for criminal prosecution.

But such an approach would come at a very high cost. In the prosecution business, interviews need to happen as soon as possible after the events in question, to prevent both forgetfulness and witness coordination to conceal the truth. A comprehensive Department of Justice probe of the leadership is now more urgently needed than ever.

It is also imperative that Mr. Trump be included on the list of those being investigated. The media has widely reported his role in many of the relevant events, and there is no persuasive reason to exclude him.

First, he has no claim to constitutional immunity from prosecution. The Department of Justices Office of Legal Counsel has recognized such immunity only for sitting presidents because a criminal trial would prevent them from discharging the duties of their office. Mr. Trump no longer has those duties to discharge.

Nor is exclusion of the former president remotely justified by the precedent President Gerald Ford set in pardoning Richard Nixon to help the country heal from Watergate. Even our proud tradition of not mimicking banana republics by allowing political winners to retaliate against losers must give way in the wake of violence perpetrated to thwart the peaceful transition of power. Refusing to at least investigate those who plot to end democracy and who would remain engaged in efforts to do so would be beyond foolhardy.

Furthermore, the pending state and local investigations in New York and Atlanta will never be able to provide the kind of accountability the nation clearly needs. The New York case, which revolves around tax fraud, has nothing to do with the attack on our government. The Atlanta district attorney appears to be probing Mr. Trumps now infamous call to Mr. Raffensperger. But that is just one chapter of the wrongdoing that led up to the attack on the Capitol.

Significantly, even if the Atlanta district attorney is able to convict Mr. Meadows and Mr. Trump for interfering in Georgias election, they could still run for office again. Only convicting them for participating in an insurrection would permanently disqualify them from office under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.

Some have expressed pessimism that the Department of Justice would be able to convict Mr. Trump. His guilt would ultimately be for a jury to decide, and some jurors might believe he deluded himself into believing his own big lie and thus genuinely thought he was saving, rather than sabotaging, the election. But concerns about a conviction are no reason to refrain from an investigation. If anything, a federal criminal investigation could unearth even more evidence and provide a firmer basis for deciding whether to indict.

To decline from the outset to investigate would be appeasement, pure and simple, and appeasing bullies and wrongdoers only encourages more of the same. Without forceful action to hold the wrongdoers to account, we will likely not resist what some retired generals see as a march to another insurrection in 2024 if Mr. Trump or another demagogue loses.

Throughout his public life, Mr. Garland has been a highly principled public servant focused on doing the right thing. But only by holding the leaders of the Jan. 6 insurrection all of them to account can he secure the future and teach the next generation that no one is above the law. If he has not done so already, we implore the attorney general to step up to that task.

Laurence H. Tribe (@tribelaw) is a university professor emeritus at Harvard Law School. Donald Ayer (@DonaldAyer6) was a U.S. attorney in the Reagan administration and deputy attorney general in the George H.W. Bush administration. Dennis Aftergut (@dennisaftergut) is a former assistant U.S. attorney.

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Opinion | Will Donald Trump Get Away With Inciting an Insurrection? - The New York Times

The New York attorney general, Letitia James, said on Monday her investigation of Donald Trumps business affairs would continue undeterred, despite Trump suing to stop it on grounds of political bias, because no one is above the law, not even someone with the name Trump.

The New York Times first reported Trumps lawsuit, filed in federal court in Syracuse, New York. It alleges that James, a Democrat, is guided solely by political animus and a desire to harass, intimidate and retaliate against a private citizen who she views as a political opponent.

James is investigating whether the Trump Organization manipulated valuations of its real estate properties.

In one such instance, as Trump ran for president in 2016, the Guardian reported on differing valuations of a golf club outside New York City. The headline: How Trumps $50m golf club became $1.4m when it came time to pay tax.

The Washington Post and other outlets have reported similar alleged practices at other Trump properties.

Last year, investigators working for James interviewed Eric Trump, one of the former presidents sons and a Trump Organization executive. James went to court to enforce a subpoena and a judge forced the younger Trump to testify, after his lawyers canceled a deposition.

In an investigation that could only result in civil charges, James recently said she would seek to question Donald Trump under oath.

It is rare for law enforcement agencies to issue a civil subpoena for testimony from a person also the subject of a related criminal investigation, partly because the person could simply cite their fifth amendment right to remain silent.

It is unlikely Trumps lawyers would allow him to be deposed unless they were sure his testimony could not be used against him in a criminal case.

Trumps business and tax affairs are also the subject of a criminal investigation run by the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus Vance, which has been in progress for more than three years. James joined that investigation in May.

The Manhattan case includes a focus on whether the Trump Organization overstated the value of some real estate assets to obtain loans and tax benefits.

In their lawsuit against James, who recently announced a run for governor of New York before stepping back, Trump and the Trump Organization claim the attorney general has violated their rights under the US constitution by pursuing a politically motivated investigation.

Trump and the company pointed to public statements James made before she was elected as attorney general.

The lawsuit also made a plainly political play of its own, echoing Trumps language in office and on the campaign trail when it said: Rather than diligently prosecuting actual crimes in the state of New York which are steadily on the rise James has instead allocated precious taxpayer resources towards a frivolous witch hunt.

Trump and the Trump Organization are seeking a court order barring the investigation from going forward.

In a statement, Trumps attorney, Alina Habba, said: By filing this lawsuit, we intend to not only hold her accountable for her blatant constitutional violations, but to stop her bitter crusade to punish her political opponent in its tracks.

In her own statement, James said: The Trump Organization has continually sought to delay our investigation into its business dealings and now Donald Trump and his namesake company have filed a lawsuit as an attempted collateral attack on that investigation.

To be clear, neither Mr Trump nor the Trump Organization get to dictate if and where they will answer for their actions. Our investigation will continue undeterred because no one is above the law, not even someone with the name Trump.

James also noted that in August 2020 she filed a motion to compel the Trump Organization to provide documents and testimony from multiple witnesses regarding several, specific Trump Organization properties and transactions.

Since then, the court has ruled in Attorney General James favor multiple times.

Last month, Trumps former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen who served a three-year sentence for offences including campaign finance violations relating to a payoff to the porn star Stormy Daniels, who claims an affair with Trump was asked about the prospect of Trump being indicted in the criminal investigation in Manhattan.

Cohen said he was confident prosecutors could indict Donald Trump tomorrow if they really wanted and be successful.

Asked if he was confident you did help Donald Trump commit crimes, Cohen told NBC: I can assure you that Donald Trump is guilty of his own crimes. Was I involved in much of the inflation and deflation of his assets? The answer to that is yes.

In July, the longtime Trump Organization chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, pleaded not guilty to criminal charges in what a prosecutor in Vances office called a sweeping and audacious 15-year tax fraud.

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New York attorney general vows Trump investigation will proceed undeterred - The Guardian

When I first heard the rumblings that Donald Trump could become the next speaker of the House, I rolled my eyes.

What fresh insanity, right? Like most people, I believed the speaker of the House had to be an elected member of Congress.

Think back to the speakers youve heard of. Not just the most recent ones, but also Sam Rayburn of Texas. Tip ONeill, the Boston pol who dominated the House of Representatives when I was coming of age. Newt Gingrich, who changed the course of conservative American politics. James K. Polk! Henry Clay!

Every single one of them, and every single one of their predecessors going back to Frederick Muhlenberg of Pennsylvania in 1789, was a member of the House. So pardon my ignorance for thinking it was a requirement.

In fact, there is no law or constitutional mandate that limits the speakership to an elected representative. There isnt even a House rule about it. Its just a norm, and we know what those are worth these days.

Opinion Columnist

Nicholas Goldberg

Nicholas Goldberg served 11 years as editor of the editorial page and is a former editor of the Op-Ed page and Sunday Opinion section.

To become speaker, all a person needs to do is win an absolute majority of votes cast by the elected members of the House. That person could be the D.C. dog catcher or some wild-eyed madman proclaiming the end of days outside the Capitol or a child chosen at random from a nearby fourth-grade classroom.

Or, worse yet, it could be Donald Trump.

The first I heard of this awful idea was back in June, when it was floated by Trump sycophant Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.). He suggested that if the GOP were to win a majority in the House in the midterms as it is expected to do its members could then vote Trump in as their leader.

Can you just imagine Nancy Pelosi having to hand that gavel to Donald J. Trump? Gaetz crowed in a speech in June.

A Trump spokesman dismissed the idea, saying the former president had zero desire to be speaker.

But then in November, former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows suggested it again. As you know, you dont have to be an elected member of Congress to be speaker, he added on Trump confidant Stephen K. Bannons War Room podcast.

Then Bannon chimed in, suggesting the ex-president could come in [as speaker] for 100 days to sort things out and then go back to running for president in 2024. By sort things out, he apparently meant beginning impeachment proceedings against President Biden.

Two weeks ago, Gaetz announced that hed spoken to Trump about the speakership but refused to offer any details. Other right-wing pundits and pols have come out in favor of the idea.

None of this should be taken too seriously. These guys are provocateurs. Then again, given the state of politics in the U.S. right now, can even lunatic propositions be ruled out?

Some experts have opined that the speaker rumors were just a way of trolling House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield), who is in line to become speaker if the GOP takes control.

They suggest the idea is being pushed by the ultraconservative Freedom Caucus because of dissatisfaction with McCarthy. Even though hes a reliable Trump bootlicker, apparently McCarthy is not enough of a wacko for Reps. Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and their ilk.

Trump, unsurprisingly, has failed to rule out taking charge of the House. Well, Ive heard the talk and its getting more and more, he said. He added that he had a good relationship with Kevin and hopefully we will do everything traditionally.

Id consider that weak reassurance if I were McCarthy.

The big question in my mind is whats in it for Trump? Hed get some headlines, yeah. And some more disruption, plus an opportunity to press Nancy Pelosis face into the mud.

But its hardly his sort of job. Effective speakers do a lot of glad-handing, do favors, deal with minor issues like Fix the carpet in my office and other grunt work, says Matthew Green, a professor of political science at Catholic University who studies Congress. You need to be loyal to the institution and to the members of the institution.

Not that the job isnt powerful. Speakers have a role in appointing committee members and chairs, decide points of order, recognize who gets to speak on the floor and have significant control over what measures move forward. They can dole out or withhold favors. They play a leading role in negotiations with the president and theyre usually leader of the majority party caucus. Theyre also third in line of presidential succession, after the vice president.

It would be a disaster if Trump were given the gavel. Because, first, he shouldnt be in any position of power whatsoever. But also because Congress should be overseen by an elected official, accountable to voters not by an unelected, irresponsible demagogue with only his own interests at heart.

One Democrat recently introduced a bill to bar nonmembers of Congress from becoming speaker. But it strikes me as unlikely to become law.

Theres also the possibility that if Trump became speaker, it could be challenged in court. But theres no guarantee the court would take such a highly political case.

So should we prepare ourselves for Speaker Trump? Well, probably not, but when it comes to our ex-president, you cant rule out any bit of chicanery or malevolence. Trump and his acolytes could be trolling for the heck of it, or it could be a sinister plot, like the equally unimaginable but all too real effort to delegitimize and reverse the 2020 election.

I didnt take that too seriously either at first, and boy was I wrong.

@Nick_Goldberg

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Nicholas Goldberg: Is there a worse idea than Speaker Trump? - Los Angeles Times

Trump winning kind of showed, Hey, anybody can do this, said Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), a former college football coach elected in 2020. President Trump opened the doors for a lot of people. Hes not a lawyer. He hadnt been in politics before. Hes an outsider. So that influenced my decision.

I started a trend, didnt I? Tuberville quipped.

Missouri's Roy Blunt, the No. 4 Senate GOP leader, took the well-traveled route to the upper chamber spending nearly a decade and a half in the House before moving up, with leadership credentials to boot. But Blunt said he's not surprised that Trump's background has inspired more celebrities to mull runs for office.

The logical response to President Trumps election would be people running who dont have political experience but have wide recognition, said Blunt, who is retiring next year. Two House Republicans are vying in the primary to replace him, but they're currently trailing the state's former governor and sitting attorney general.

Running as a household name certainly has its perks, particularly in a costly statewide race. Besides the obvious name recognition, they can raise money more easily or tap their own personal fortunes to fund their campaigns than their competition while claiming the outsider status often coveted in congressional runs. And with the wide reach of cable talk shows, already well-known candidates can communicate to voters fairly easily without paying for advertisements.

On the other hand, celebrity candidates can be unaccustomed to the intense vetting and media scrutiny that comes with running for office.

I joke that the most expensive walk in Washington is from the House to the Senate, said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), another onetime House member. Celebrity gives you an instant attention, but it also has a downside. You have to prove that youre more than a celebrity.

Walker, for one, is facing questions about his marital history and academic credentials in the Georgia Senate race. Oz has to battle skepticism about his promotion of scientifically dubious remedies on his show, not to mention his Pennsylvania residency given his years living in New Jersey.

The celebrity doctor has emphasized that he grew up in the Philadelphia region, votes in the state and went to graduate school there. Oz has also defended his medical advice. He told a Senate panel that he has given the products he promotes to his family, but also said he recognized that oftentimes they don't have the scientific muster to present as fact.

Theres also the stark knowledge gap that virtually any candidate who came to Congress through entertainment or sports would confront when it comes to writing legislation. Longtime lawmakers warn that the resulting erosion of policy prowess could lead to further partisanship in a chamber thats already bitterly divided.

These celebrities dont come here with an interest in legislating. They come here with an interest in grandstanding and getting TV clips, because thats what theyve spent their entire career doing, said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who also began his career in the House after time in the state legislature.

My worry is that as you get more people here who have no experience in cutting a deal, it makes a place thats already pretty dysfunctional even worse," Murphy added.

That shift away from Hill deal-cutting practice could be dramatic in the next Congress: All five of the Senate Republicans who've announced their retirements next year are former House members, with collective decades of bipartisanship under their belts.

And the Senate GOP conference could see several new members with zero legislative experience. In addition to Oz and Walker, author J.D. Vance is mounting his own campaign in Ohio.

A spokesperson for Oz said in a statement that he has "spent his career empowering patients and audiences alike to change their lives for the better and is "an outsider." The spokesperson added that "it's that outside the Beltway, people-first mentality that Dr. Oz champions and will make D.C. more accountable when he becomes the next Senator for Pennsylvania."

Fame outside of politics "gets your foot in the door, that gets eyeballs on you, but you still got to perform, said Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio), the current frontrunner in his party's primary to capture that Buckeye State Senate seat next year.

Trump had that. He obviously was able to convince a large part of the country that he was the real deal, said Ryan, who's spent 18 years in the House. But he warned that "when the lights come on, youve got to be able to perform. People are gonna love you if you're a celebrity, and it's more romanticized. But then they take a good close look at you, and you're gonna pass muster or not.

Democrats have seen celebrity candidates on their side of the aisle, too.

Most recently, there was billionaire Mike Bloomberg, whose bid for president tanked but not before racking up endorsements from Hill Democrats. (Bloomberg also served as New York City mayor.) Perhaps the most famous examples are former Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.), a Saturday Night Live comedian turned political activist, and pro basketball player turned senator, Bill Bradley of New Jersey.

And some Democratic candidates have achieved rock star status just by running repeatedly for higher office; former Rep. Beto ORourke recently launched a campaign for Texas governor after two consecutive unsuccessful bids for the White House and the Senate.

It can be hard to go from a position where people like you and say kind things to you and then when you become a candidate and your words get dissected and it actually matters how youre able to handle that is, I think, important , observed Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). Im not suggesting that a football star or a TV personality cant do that, but I do think that sometimes its just harder for them.

Walker and Ozs candidacies, of course, dont quite mean that celebrity will become a requirement for GOP Senate viability. GOP Reps. Vicky Hartzler and Billy Long are trying to replace Blunt in Missouri, while Rep. Ted Budd (R-N.C.) has Trump's backing in the race to succeed retiring Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.). And first-term Republican Sens. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee and Roger Marshall of Kansas are all former House members.

Despite his own roots in the House, Cramer said hes come to appreciate higher-profile Senate candidates for at least one reason: Being elected to Congress isnt the biggest thing thats ever happened to them. And I think thats sort of nice.

Theres no question that Donald Trump broke the mold, Cramer added. I dont know that hes the new mold, but he certainly broke the old one.

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Senate GOP feels another Trump effect: The rise of celeb candidates - POLITICO