In recent weeks, the White House has taken steps to assure Kevin Cramer that President Donald Trump is in his corner. | Drew Angerer/Getty Images Trump to campaign in N. Dakota for Rep. Kevin Cramer

President Donald Trump will visit North Dakota on June 27 to campaign with GOP Rep. Kevin Cramer, a trip that could go a long way toward extinguishing tensions between the White House and the Senate hopeful.

Trump’s planned trip to Fargo, which the candidate announced on Friday on Twitter , came after Cramer took the unusual step of publicly attacking the administration for its seemingly warm treatment of his Democratic opponent, Sen. Heidi Heitkamp.


During a recent North Dakota radio interview , Cramer lashed out at the White House legislative affairs director, Marc Short, who played a central role in inviting Heitkamp to a high-profile bill signing with the president last month in the White House.

“If Marc Short was very good at his job, you know, we’d have a repeal and replacement of Obamacare, we’d have a replacement of the venting and flaring rule,” Cramer said in the interview.

Then, in a Washington Post interview published earlier this week, Cramer intensified his criticism of the White House — and suggested that Trump was giving Heitkamp preferential treatment because she’s a woman.

In that story, Short fired back against Cramer.

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“I think he’s better spending his time focused on his opponent than on a White House staffer who has zero percent name ID in North Dakota,” Short told The Post. “But that’s up to him.”

Trump’s flirtation with Heitkamp, one of the most vulnerable Democrats up for reelection in 2018, has deeply angered Cramer, people close to the congressman say.

After initially saying that he wouldn’t run for the seat early this year, Cramer was aggressively recruited back into the race by Trump — leaving the candidate and his allies convinced that the president would have his back.

In recent weeks, the White House has taken steps to assure Cramer that the president is in his corner. The congressman has been in close touch with Bill Stepien, the White House political director.

Still, Republicans worry that Heitkamp will use her appearances with the president to her political advantage. Last year, she rode aboard Air Force One with Trump and, during an event in North Dakota, the president called the senator onstage and lavished praise on her.

