Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich said President Donald Trump told him last year he would back the ex-governor for office if he ever ran again.
Trump commuted Blagojevich’s 14-year sentence in February 2020, years after the former governor was convicted on corruption charges in 2011 for attempting to sell former President Barack Obama’s Senate seat. Blagojevich said he received a call five days after Trump’s 2025 inauguration from Sergio Gor, the director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office at the time, who transferred the president to the call.
Blagojevich said Trump told him “something along the lines” that it is “terrible what they did to you.” He added that Trump said, “I’m going to clean it all up for you, you’ll be cleaner than me!”
“Then he asked me if I’d be interested in running for office someday, and I said, ‘Look, I’m like you, you know, competitive, you feel like you got cheated out of the last fight, you want get back in the ring, so there’s that part of me,’” Blagojevich said on Fox News’ Hang Out with Sean Hannity podcast on Thursday. “I have family considerations. My family, it’s been a hard thing.”
“And he said, ‘Well, what party would you run for?’ And I said, ‘I’d run as a Trumpocrat.’ And he said something like, “Hey, look, whatever you run for, whatever party, I’ll back ya,” Blagojevich said.
Blagojevich added that Trump asked how his wife was doing, something the president “always” asks when they speak. Blagojevich added that he repeated his “profound gratitude” for helping him and “giving my little girls their father back.”
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Trump called Blagojevich’s jail sentence “outrageous” on social media in 2012, five years before he entered the White House. He told the press in 2020 that he commuted the former governor’s sentence after Blagojevich served “eight years in jail,” adding that he “seems like a very nice person, don’t know him.”
Blagojevich is releasing a book on Aug. 25 titled Framed, F***ed, & Freed: A Governor’s Odyssey, a memoir exploring his time in prison.
The Washington Examiner contacted the White House for comment to corroborate Blagojevich’s statements.