Early on in Donald Trump’s presidency, the Republican looked to then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell as someone who would simply follow the White House’s demands. When the senator tried to explain how government worked, a “profane shouting match” soon followed.
After Trump’s defeat in 2020, the relationship collapsed further. McConnell had the audacity to accept the results of his own country’s elections and to criticize Trump for failing to do the same, at which point the former president started condemning the GOP leader as a corrupt “hack.”
On Feb. 13, 2021, in the immediate aftermath of Trump’s second impeachment trial, McConnell delivered especially pointed remarks, condemning the former president’s “disgraceful dereliction of duty” on Jan. 6. The Senate minority leader added, “There is no question — none — that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day. No question about it.”
In the same speech, McConnell called out Trump for his “crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories, and reckless hyperbole … orchestrated by an outgoing president who seemed determined to either overturn the voters’ decision or else torch our institutions on the way out.”
In private, the Kentucky Republican reportedly went even further. NBC News reported:
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has endorsed Donald Trump for president this year. But in a new book, the powerful Kentucky Republican is quoted after the 2020 election disparaging Trump as a ‘despicable human being,’ ‘stupid’ and ‘ill-tempered.’
The same book — “The Price of Power,” from veteran journalist Michael Tackett, the Associated Press’ deputy bureau chief — added that McConnell described the GOP candidate as “narcissistic” and unfit for office. McConnell also reportedly sobbed to his staff on Jan. 6, lamenting the fact that the then-president put their lives in danger.
Oddly enough, when asked for a comment, the Senate’s top GOP member didn’t deny any of this. McConnell instead told the AP in a statement, “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.”
The statement is striking in a few ways. For one thing, McConnell could’ve distanced himself from the provocative quotes in the book, but he didn’t bother. For another, the statement offered no actual praise for his party’s 2024 nominee.
Finally, McConnell’s broader point seemed to be that plenty of Republicans who are supporting Trump’s current candidacy have condemned him in the recent past. That’s true, though it doesn’t change the fact that the GOP senator apparently told others that his party’s nominee for the nation’s highest office is a “despicable human being” and “stupid” — and he’s shown no interest in denouncing those comments.
The larger question is the one McConnell prefers not to talk about: It’s not about whether he and Trump are “on the same team now,” but rather, why.
As regular readers might recall, in the months after the former president left the White House, he waged an unsubtle campaign against the Kentucky Republican, all but begging GOP senators to replace the longtime lawmaker as their leader. He also said McConnell “has a DEATH WISH” for disagreeing with Trump’s legislative strategies, and he went on to tell The New York Times, on the record, that he consider McConnell to be “a piece of s—.”
Trump was just as aggressive in going after the GOP leader’s wife, former cabinet secretary Elaine Chao, with racist taunts and dubious allegations of corruption.
It was against this backdrop that McConnell sat down in April 2022 with reporter Jonathan Swan, who asked whether there were any “moral red lines” that would lead the senator to withhold his support from a Trump-led ticket. “As a Republican leader of the Senate, it should not be a front-page headline that I will support the Republican nominee for president,” McConnell replied, adding, “I think I have an obligation to support the nominee of my party, and I will.” When Swan pressed on, asking if there’s anything Trump could possibly do that would be a bridge too far, McConnell appeared visibly frustrated. “I don’t get to pick the Republican nominee for president,” he replied. “They’re elected by the Republican voters.” In other words, asked about his “moral red lines,” the Kentuckian conceded that such lines effectively do not exist, at least insofar as electoral politics is concerned. A year later, after Trump targeted McConnell’s wife again, the Senate minority leader again said he’d support his party’s nominee, “no matter who that may be.” Now, McConnell is “on the same team” as a man he apparently considers “despicable” — not because he’s changed his mind, and not because Trump has improved, but because the senator is convinced that the only affiliation that truly matters is party. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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