Trump Predicts Scandals Turn Virginia Back to GOP in 2020 

(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump predicted that the state of Virginia would vote Republican in 2020 after scandals engulfed top three state officials, all of them Democrats.

“Democrats at the top are killing the Great State of Virginia,” Trump said in a tweet. “Virginia will come back HOME Republican”

Trump’s comments demonstrate how Republicans will try to capitalize on widening scandals that evoke the South’s ugly history on race as well as the more recent accounting of the #MeToo movement.

Governor Ralph Northam is resisting calls to resign over a racist photo in his medical school yearbook. Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax is fighting a sexual assault allegation, and Attorney General Mark Herring said Wednesday that he and his friends "dressed up and put on wigs and brown makeup" in the 1980s in an attempt to imitate rappers such as Kurtis Blow.

The state has gone to Democratic presidential contenders since 2004.

Trump also said “far stronger action” would be taken if the three politicians facing the allegations were from his Republican Party. Iowa Republican Representative Steve King, who has a long history of making racist, anti-Semitic and xenophobic comments, also faced calls for resignation and was stripped of committee assignments.

To contact the reporters on this story: Kasia Klimasinska in Washington at kklimasinska@bloomberg.net;Terrence Dopp in Washington at tdopp@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Derek Wallbank at dwallbank@bloomberg.net, Elizabeth Wasserman

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