Trump's most devoted acolytes causing headaches in midterm races

Donald Trump may have spent the last two years bouncing from scandal to scandal, but almost every Republican running for office in November's midterm elections is throwing their arms around him.

Rather than distancing themselves from an unpopular president, candidates for congressional and gubernatorial races are tying themselves to him.

He may not be embarrassing them, but at least some may end up embarrassing him.

Ron DeSantis built his campaign for governor of Florida around Donald Trump, touting his endorsement from the president.

In one campaign ad he was seen building a wall in his living room with one of his children, reading The Art of the Deal to his baby and teaching another to say "Make America Great Again".

Mr DeSantis won the Republican nomination decisively yesterday, and then proceeded to jump straight into a racially charged gaffe.

Mr DeSantis used the phrase "monkey" to describe his African-American opponent Andrew Gillum.

The term is seen as a derogatory term for African-Americans.

"The last thing we need to do is to monkey this up by trying to embrace a socialist agenda with huge tax increases," he said in a Fox News interview.

The phrase "monkey this up" is not a term in frequent usage, and it appears Mr DeSantis may have coined it on the fly.

Fox later clarified the network did not condone the language.

Hours later it emerged Mr DeSantis was the moderator of a Facebook page littered with distasteful memes.

The group named "Tea Party" described school shooting survivor David Hogg as a "Hitler wannabe" and relentlessly mocked John McCain after his death.

The Tea Party was a conservative movement that began in 2009, but this Facebook group does not appear to have any formal affiliation.

"President Trump bestows Medal of Honor to John McCain's tumor," one post read.

"Traitor to America, friend to the Vietcong," read another.

McCain spent five years as a prisoner of war, during which he was tortured to the point of permanent disability by the Viet Cong.

Another doctored image showed McCain standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Osama bin Laden.

Mr DeSantis quickly removed himself as a moderator on the page, though his wife is still a member of the page.

But several more prominent Trump supporters vying for high office are still listed as moderators.

They include three politicians running for Senate seats, Matt Rosendale from Montana, Patrick Morrisey from West Virginia and Corey Stewart from Virginia.

Mr Trump is scheduled to campaign for Mr Rosendale next week.

Nevada politician Danny Tarkanian, who is running for Congress, is also a moderator.

Mr Stewart is proving himself particularly toxic. Fellow Republicans in Virginia are distancing himself from his campaign.

Mr Stewart won his Senate primary on a platform centred on preserving Confederate monuments.

Last year he slammed African-American football players who knelt during the national anthem to protest police brutality.

"A lot of these guys, I mean, they're thugs, they are beating up their girlfriends and their wives," he said.

"They've got, you know, children all over the place that they don't pay attention to, don't father, with many different women, they are womanisers.

"These are not people that we should have our sons, or any of our children look up to."

Mr Stewart also praised the secession of Virginia from the United States during the Civil War.

Though not all Trump acolytes are winning Republicans over.

Kelli Ward lost in the primary for an Arizona Senate seat yesterday.

Mrs Ward accused John McCain of announcing that he was suspending cancer treatment on the same day as one of her campaign events to spite her.

"Political correctness is like a cancer," she wrote two days after McCain's death.

Mrs Ward, who is also a moderator of the "Tea Party" Facebook group and whose husband is a frequent poster, lost decisively in the primary to a more mainstream conservative, Martha McSally.

November's midterm elections this November include every House of Representatives seat, a third of the Senate seats and numerous governor's races.

If the Democrats manage to take back Congress, they could seriously hamper Mr Trump's agenda and may begin the process of impeachment.

Read more: Google rigged against me, says Trump

Read more: Trump risks breaking law by pardoning Manafort