Trump blames ‘foolish’ Republican candidate Mazi Pilip for NY special election loss

Donald Trump has hit out at New York Republican candidate Mazi Pilip, branding her a “very foolish woman” for not appealing to his MAGA brand – after she lost the race for George Santos’s former seat to Democrat Tom Suozzi.

Mr Suozzi won the special election in the Big Apple’s 3rd congressional district on Tuesday night, which comprises eastern Queens and the Long Island suburbs of Nassau County.

The Democrat picked up 53.9 per cent of the vote to Ms Pilip’s 46.1 per cent.

He will now take the seat previously occupied by the scandal-mired Mr Santos after he was pushed out of Congress over a series of scandals including criminal charges and his penchant for lying about his personal life.

Clearly angered by New Yorkers braving a blizzard to vote for Mr Suozzi in their droves, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination fired out an angry denunciation of Ms Pilip on his Truth Social platform – in which he disowned her candidacy over her failure to embrace him and his MAGA message more explicitly.

“Republicans just don’t learn, but maybe she was still a Democrat?”, Mr Trump fumed in a post.

“I have an almost 99 per cent Endorsement Success Rate in Primaries, and a very good number in the General Elections, as well, but just watched this very foolish woman, Mazi Melesa Pilip, running in a race where she didn’t endorse me and tried to ‘straddle the fence,’ when she would have easily WON if she understood anything about MODERN DAY politics in America.

“MAGA, WHICH IS MOST OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY, STAYED HOME – AND IT ALWAYS WILL, UNLESS IT IS TREATED WITH THE RESPECT THAT IT DESERVES.”

Ms Pilip was born in Ethiopia but raised in Israel where she served with the Israeli Defence Forces before marrying and moving