Trump-Endorsed Russell Fry Defeats Impeachment Republican Tom Rice

Trump-backed conservative Russell Fry defeated incumbent Rep. Tom Rice (R-SC) in South Carolina’s primary Tuesday evening, marking another successful endorsement for the former president.

Decision Desk HQ called the race late Tuesday night, as did others:

Decision Desk HQ projects Russell Fry
(@RussellFrySC) is the winner of the Republican nomination for U.S. House District 7 in South Carolina, unseating incumbent Rep. Tom Rice.

Race call: 10:36pm EDT

More results here: https://t.co/KJz0mg88oL

— Decision Desk HQ (@DecisionDeskHQ) June 15, 2022

As of 10:47 p.m. Eastern time, with over 95 percent of the vote in, Fry led Rice 51.1 percent to 24.6 percent, per the New York Times.

Rice, one of the ten House Republicans who voted to impeach former President Donald Trump, has continued to defend his decision to vote alongside Democrats, stating during a recent appearance on ABC’s This Week that he would only consider supporting Trump in the future if the former president apologized for January 6. Rice told This Week, defending his impeachment vote:

It wasn’t that hard. When I thought about what had happened and the president’s activity or inactivity that day, he sat there and put his own vice president’s life, and vice president’s wife’s and his daughter’s life at risk with people shouting, hang Mike Pence, when watched the Capitol being sacked, when he watched the Capitol police officers being beaten, for three or four hours, and lifted not one finger to stop it, it was clear to me what I had to.

“I was livid. I took an oath to protect the Constitution. I did it then, and I would do it tomorrow,” he said, also adding that RINO Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) would make a “great” Speaker of the House.