It’s been a minute since we’ve discussed anything regarding ol’ Moscow Mitch McConnell, currently the Senate Minority Leader. After the election, McConnell will step down as the GOP’s Senate leader but he will complete his term (until 2026). McConnell also gave a full-throated endorsement of Donald Trump months ago, although I have not heard McConnell standing up for Trump in recent months. McConnell and Trump’s personal relationship was always a bit strained, but Moscow Mitch always managed to capitulate to Trump and all of Trump’s worst instincts. Speaking of, a new biography of Moscow Mitch is coming out soon and apparently Mitch regularly talks sh-t about Trump. Rancid turtle turns on orange fascist, most of us are Team No One.
Mitch McConnell said after the 2020 election that then-President Donald Trump was “stupid as well as being ill-tempered,” a “despicable human being” and a “narcissist,” according to excerpts from a new biography of the Senate Republican leader that will be released this month. McConnell made the remarks in private as part of a series of personal oral histories that he made available to Michael Tackett, deputy Washington bureau chief of The Associated Press. Tackett’s book, “The Price of Power,” draws from almost three decades of McConnell’s recorded diaries and from years of interviews with the normally reticent Kentucky Republican.
Despite those strong words, McConnell has endorsed Trump’s 2024 run, saying earlier this year “it should come as no surprise” that he would support the Republican party’s nominee. He shook Trump’s hand in June when Trump visited GOP senators on Capitol Hill.
The comments about Trump quoted in the book came in the weeks before the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Trump was then actively trying to overturn his loss to Democrat Joe Biden. McConnell feared this would hurt Republicans in two Georgia runoffs and cost them the Senate majority. Democrats won both races. Publicly, McConnell had congratulated Biden after the Electoral College certified the presidential vote and the senator warned his fellow Republicans not to challenge the results. But he did not say much else. Privately, he said in his oral history that “it’s not just the Democrats who are counting the days” until Trump left office, and that Trump’s behavior “only underscores the good judgment of the American people. They’ve had just enough of the misrepresentations, the outright lies almost on a daily basis, and they fired him. And for a narcissist like him that’s been really hard to take, and so his behavior since the election has been even worse, by far, than it was before, because he has no filter now at all.”
Before those Georgia runoffs, McConnell said Trump is “stupid as well as being ill-tempered and can’t even figure out where his own best interests lie.” Trump was also holding up a coronavirus aid package at the time, despite bipartisan support. “This despicable human being,” McConnell said in his oral history, “is sitting on this package of relief that the American people desperately need.”
On Jan. 6, soon after he made those comments, McConnell was holed up in a secure location with other congressional leaders, calling Vice President Mike Pence and military officials for reinforcements as Trump supporters stormed the Capitol. Once the Senate resumed debate over the certification of Biden’s victory, McConnell said in a speech on the floor that “this failed attempt to obstruct the Congress, this failed insurrection, only underscores how crucial the task before us is for our republic.” McConnell then went to his office to address his staff, some of whom had barricaded themselves in the office as rioters banged on their doors. He started to sob softly as he thanked them, Tackett writes. “You are my family, and I hate the fact that you had to go through this,” he told them.
The next month, McConnell gave his harshest public criticism of Trump on the Senate floor, saying he was “ practically and morally responsible ” for the Jan. 6 attack. Still, McConnell voted to acquit Trump after House Democrats impeached him for inciting the riot.
The AP contacted McConnell about their reporting on his authorized biography, and McConnell told them: “Whatever I may have said about President Trump pales in comparison to what JD Vance, Lindsey Graham, and others have said about him, but we are all on the same team now.” It’s one thing I haven’t gotten used to in the past nine years – the utter cowardice from elected Republicans in the face of the biggest threat to American democracy in the history of the republic. It’s not just cowardice and that particularly sleazy sniveling and boot-licking – it’s that most of these Republicans are fully aware that Trump is a uniquely dangerous man. These are not people who were hoodwinked or saw their good-faith trust in Trump destroyed. They have all chosen to capitulate to Trump every single time.
Photos courtesy of Cover Images.