WASHINGTON (AP) — Mitch McConnell mentioned after the 2020 election that then-President Donald Trump was “stupid as well as being ill-tempered,” a “despicable human being” and a “narcissist,” in line with excerpts from a brand new biography of the Senate Republican chief that will probably be launched this month.
McConnell made the remarks in personal as a part of a sequence of non-public oral histories that he made obtainable to Michael Tackett, deputy Washington bureau chief of The Related Press.
Tackett’s guide, “The Price of Power,” attracts from nearly three a long time of McConnell’s recorded diaries and from years of interviews with the usually reticent Kentucky Republican.
The animosity between Trump and McConnell is well-known — Trump as soon as referred to as McConnell ” a dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack.”
However McConnell’s personal feedback are by far his most brutal evaluation of the previous president and may very well be seized on by Democrats earlier than the Nov. 5 election. The biography will probably be launched Oct. 29, one week earlier than Election Day that can determine if Trump returns to the White Home.
Regardless of these sturdy phrases, McConnell has endorsed Trump’s 2024 run, saying earlier this yr “it should come as no surprise” that he would help the Republican social gathering’s nominee. He shook Trump’s hand in June when Trump visited GOP senators on Capitol Hill.
McConnell, 82, introduced this yr that he’ll step apart as Republican chief after the election however keep within the Senate via the top of his time period in 2026.
McConnell was ‘counting the days’ till Trump left workplace
The feedback about Trump quoted within the guide got here within the weeks earlier than the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol. Trump was then actively attempting to overturn his loss to Democrat Joe Biden. McConnell feared this is able to harm Republicans in two Georgia runoffs and price them the Senate majority. Democrats gained each races.
Publicly, McConnell had congratulated Biden after the Electoral Faculty licensed the presidential vote and the senator warned his fellow Republicans to not problem the outcomes. However he didn’t say a lot else.
Privately, he mentioned in his oral historical past that “it’s not just the Democrats who are counting the days” till Trump left workplace, and that Trump’s habits “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,” McConnell continued, “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.”
Earlier than these Georgia runoffs, McConnell mentioned Trump is “stupid as well as being ill-tempered and can’t even figure out where his own best interests lie.”
Trump was additionally holding up a coronavirus support bundle on the time, regardless of bipartisan help. “This despicable human being,” McConnell mentioned in his oral historical past, “is sitting on this package of relief that the American people desperately need.”
On Jan. 6, quickly after he made these feedback, McConnell was holed up in a safe location with different congressional leaders, calling Vice President Mike Pence and navy officers for reinforcements as Trump supporters stormed the Capitol. As soon as the Senate resumed debate over the certification of Biden’s victory, McConnell mentioned in a speech on the ground 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 workplace to deal with his workers, a few of whom had barricaded themselves within the workplace as rioters banged on their doorways. He began 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 advised them.
The subsequent month, McConnell gave his harshest public criticism of Trump on the Senate ground, saying he was “ practically and morally responsible ” for the Jan. 6 assault. Nonetheless, McConnell voted to acquit Trump after Home Democrats impeached him for inciting the riot.
Years of doubts and criticism
In a press release to the AP on Thursday, McConnell referenced two fellow Republican senators — JD Vance of Ohio, the vice presidential nominee, and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, each of whom are sturdy Trump allies after harshly criticizing him throughout his first run in 2016.
“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,” McConnell mentioned.
McConnell additionally had doubts about Trump from the beginning. Simply after Trump was elected in 2016, as Congress was certifying the election, McConnell advised Biden, then the outgoing vice chairman, that he thought Trump may very well be hassle, Tackett writes.
The guide channels McConnell’s inside ideas throughout a number of the greatest moments after Trump took workplace, as McConnell held his tongue and because the two males repeatedly fought and made up.
In 2017, as Trump publicly criticized McConnell for the Senate’s failure to repeal the Reasonably priced Care Act, Trump and McConnell had a heated argument on the telephone. Weeks glided by with no contact. Then Trump invited McConnell to the White Home and referred to as a joint information convention with out telling him first. McConnell mentioned the occasion went wonderful, and “it’s not hard to look more knowledgeable than Donald Trump at a press conference.”
After the passage of a $1.5 billion tax overhaul that very same yr, McConnell mentioned, “All of a sudden, I’m Trump’s new best friend.”
He blamed Trump after Home Republicans misplaced their majority within the 2018 midterm elections, Tackett writes. Trump ”has each attribute you wouldn’t desire a president to have,” McConnell mentioned in an oral historical past on the time, and was “not very smart, irascible, nasty.”
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In 2022, as Trump continued to criticize McConnell and made racist feedback about his spouse, former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, McConnell advised Tackett that “I can’t think of anybody I’d rather be criticized by than this sleazeball.”
“Every time he takes a shot at me, I think it’s good for my reputation,” McConnell mentioned.
Additionally in 2022, McConnell mentioned in his oral historical past that Trump’s habits since shedding the election had been “beyond erratic” as he stored pushing false allegations of voter fraud. “Unfortunately, about half the Republicans in the country believe whatever he says,” McConnell mentioned.
By 2024, McConnell had once more endorsed Trump. He felt he needed to if he had been to proceed to play a job in shaping the nation’s agenda.
“It was the price he paid for power,” Tackett writes.
