Trump slams McConnell
Calls minority leader an ‘unsmiling political hack’
Former President Donald Trump ripped Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell as each sought to exert control over a divided Republican Party.
– Seeking to keep control of a divided Republican Party, former President Donald Trump attacked Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, the GOP’s highest-ranking elected official, after comments McConnell made about Trump’s culpability for the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol insurrection.
“The Republican Party can never again be respected or strong with political ‘leaders’ like Sen. Mitch McConnell at its helm,” Trump said in a statement put out Tuesday by a political action committee called the Save America PAC.
In a stark statement that laid bare the party’s fractiousness over Trump, the ex-president described McConnell as a “hack” who will not be able to lead the Republicans back to victory.
Division within the party has been on display since the Capitol riot, after which 10 House Republicans voted to impeach him, and seven Senate Republicans voted to convict him at his impeachment trial Saturday, when he was acquitted.
The statement came three days after McConnell criticized Trump over the Jan. 6 attack by a mob of his supporters on the U.S. Capitol. He said he voted to acquit him because he did not think it was constitutional to hold an impeachment trial of a former president.
But McConnell then held Trump responsible for the attack, saying his false claims of fraud in his election loss to Joe
Biden inspired extremist followers to commit violence.
“This was an intensifying crescendo of conspiracy theories, orchestrated by an outgoing president who seemed determined to either overturn the voters’ decisions or else torch our institutions on the way out,” McConnell said Saturday after the acquittal vote.
Trump has not spoken on camera since the day he left the White House. His office has put out statements under his name.
Trump thanked Republicans who supported him and, suggesting a future run, said the political movement he began with his 2016 election has “only just begun.”
Trump appears to be winning the internal battle against Republicans who want him to go away. A Morning ConWASHINGTON
sult/Politico poll released Tuesday reported that 54% of GOP voters said they would support Trump in a hypothetical 2024 presidential primary election.
Republicans who back McConnell said it is Trump who caused the GOP to lose control of Congress and the White House.
“I love Trump warning about the demise of a party that just lost the House, Senate, and White House under him,” tweeted Brendan Buck, a former spokesman for GOP House Speakers John Boehner and Paul Ryan.
“I am so here for this conflict and so Team Mitch,” Buck said.
Trump also blamed McConnell for Republicans losing control of the Senate, something for which McConnell holds Trump responsible.