Less than a month after leaving office, President Trump slammed Mitch McConnell. “The Republican Party can never again be respected or strong with political ‘leaders’ like Sen. Mitch McConnell at its helm,” he said. “McConnell’s dedication to business as usual, status quo policies, together with his lack of political insight, wisdom, skill, and personality, has rapidly driven him from Majority Leader to Minority Leader, and it will only get worse.”
It was a surprising statement, to say the least, because the joint efforts of Trump and McConnell reshaped the judiciary. With McConnell’s help, Trump filled more vacancies in one term than any president since Jimmy Carter. With McConnell’s help, Trump got three Supreme Court picks confirmed, yet, Trump absolutely destroyed McConnell in one of the most lengthy statements I’ve seen from him since leaving office.
Trump called McConnell a “dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack,” and said that “if Republican Senators are going to stay with him, they will not win again.”
“He will never do what needs to be done, or what is right for our Country,” Trump claimed, before promising to back primary rivals to Republican incumbents who don’t support “Making America Great Again and our policy of America First” to his satisfaction.
Related: MSNBC’s Joy Reid Flies Into a Hysterical Rage About ‘Evil’ Mitch McConnell
I don’t really understand Trump’s slamming of McConnell, regardless of what happened after the 2020 election. Trump believes the election was stolen, and, frankly, I believe he’s right, but it was state Republicans and the courts that failed us, not Mitch McConnell.
Frankly, Trump’s assessment of McConnell was wrong. McConnell has stood up to Democrats, even in the toughest of situations, from moving forward with Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination last year to blocking Merrick Garland’s nomination in 2016. As a conservative, I am beyond grateful to McConnell and his efforts, and I wish Trump could look past his disagreements with McConnell and realize that he fought to Make America Great Again, against incredible odds, and at great political risk.
Perhaps the most significant of these is his blocking of Merrick Garland’s nomination to the Supreme Court. I noted back in February that Garland proved during his confirmation hearings that we really dodged a bullet, and Garland continues to prove this as attorney general. Garland is not the moderate Obama claimed him to be. Not by a long shot. During the hearings, he refused to commit to protecting special counsel John Durham’s investigation into the Obama-Biden administration’s spying on the Trump campaign, or to releasing his report to the public. He also refused to call antifa’s attacks on federal buildings domestic terrorism and evaded many questions about how he would enforce immigration policy, amongst many other things.
Since becoming attorney general, Garland has unabashedly embraced the leftist agenda, including attempts to undermine voter integrity laws and the Maricopa County audit in Arizona. He also embraces the fallacy that “white supremacy” is the “top domestic violent extremist threat” in the nation. This is hardly surprising. During his confirmation hearings, he refused to call antifa attacks on a federal courthouse “domestic terrorism” and claimed to have been unaware of the BLM riots.
For all the flack McConnell received for blocking Merrick Garland, he essentially doubled down on that controversial move by saying that if he becomes majority leader again in 2022 he will block Joe Biden from filling a Supreme Court vacancy if one occurs in 2024. So, I think it’s safe to say that Trump’s assessment of McConnell is wrong.