A new biography of Mitch McConnell is out later this month — and we got the first look at the excerpts from it this morning.
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….
….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.”
While we’ve never heard McConnell speak in such blunt terms about Trump, we’ve known for a long time of the animosity between the two men. Trump has repeatedly attacked McConnell as an “old crow” (so, so weird) and falsely suggested that McConnell’s wife, former Trump Cabinet Secretary Elaine Chao, has ties to the Chinese.
What’s truly depressing to me in reading the excerpts from the McConnell book is that it reinforces that the top Republican in the Senate knew how dangerous Trump was — to the party and the country — and chose to do nothing about it.
McConnell signaled his openness to voting to convict Trump after the January 6 insurrection but then backed off — citing a technicality (Trump was no longer president) to keep from engaging with the former president’s actual behavior after the 2020 election. Had McConnell said he was going to to vote to convict, I think he would have brought a number of Senate GOPers with him.
In retrospect, that was the last, best chance Republicans had to move on from Trump. Had the Senate convicted him and barred him for seeking office again, the GOP would not be where it is today.
But, McConnell took the politically expedient way out. And continues to do so — saying that he plans to vote for Trump in November despite his obvious issues with the former president.
When establishment Republicans look at how Trump has fundamentally transformed their party — win or lose this November — they should put a significant chunk of that blame at the feet of McConnell.
He knew — and knows — better. But he’s not willing to do anything about it.
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