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When Mitch McConnell was running for a second term in 1990, he got a $1,000 donation in the mail.
It was from Donald Trump.
McConnell returned it — writing Trump a note that the real estate developer probably needed the money more. (At the time, Trump was experiencing major financial issues.)
So began a decidedly rocky relationship that spanned more than three decades, culminating with Trump in the White House and McConnell playing out the string of his seventh term amid increasingly fraught health.
“I think McConnell was as surprised as everyone that Trump was the [2016] nominee. But also, right after Trump was elected, because he was so unknown, McConnell didn't really know what to think,” Mike Tackett, who wrote the definitive biography of the Kentucky Republican, told me in a Substack Live on Tuesday. “You know, is he going to be just kind of like a moderate Manhattan business-oriented Republican? What’s he going to be? Well, he soon found out.”
Mike and I talked about that relationship, McConnell’s failing health, whether he will ever return to the Senate and how history will remember him.
