Democratic Senator for North Dakota Heidi Heitkamp said that President Donald Trump at one point asked her to switch political parties during a December 2016 meeting in Trump Tower.
“When I visited with him in Trump Tower before he was sworn in, he asked me to switch parties,” Heitkamp said on Tuesday as part of an interview with The Washington Post.
At the time, Heitkamp was believed to be a potential Cabinet pick, and she stated that Trump wanted to talk about his administration. They had a discussion about deregulation and other areas right before Trump asked the question the senator recalled.
“He says, ‘You should switch parties’,” Heitkamp answered when asked by The Post if Trump courted her to switch parties. “I said, ‘You should give me an Ex-Im bank’,” the senator said.
Ex-Im Bank is a reference to the Export-Import Bank, an agency she was pushing to make fully operational.
The Washington Post reported last September that Trump flew Heitkamp and the rest of the North Dakota congressional delegation home from Washington on Air Force One for an event where he pitched his tax plan. Apparently, Trump has made another try to get Heitkamp to become a Republican then, she said.
“Not on that trip,” said Heitkamp in the interview, before quickly correcting herself. “He might have asked me on that trip.”
Heitkamp also told the Post that Trump often prompts her about her party affiliation.
“He’s always ribbing me a little bit about being too conservative to be a Democrat,” she said.
Heitkamp is up for reelection this year and is among the Senate Democrats expected to face a tough challenge. Trump won in North Dakota by more than 120,000 votes in 2016. During the interview, Heitkamp sought to cast her allegiance to the state Democratic Party, as opposed to the national party.
“I do feel allegiance and ties to the North Dakota Democratic-Nonpartisan League Party,” she told the Post.
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