Behind closed doors, McConnell was livid
Behind closed doors, Senate majority leader is furious about Trump’s words
Once again, Republicans find themselves in a quandary
There was a reason why it took Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell an entire night to respond to President Trump’s chaotic news conference equating counterprotesters with the Nazis they came to resist. He was livid.
Two sources close to the senator, speaking under condition of anonymity to describe private conversations, said the pro-civil rights Republican who lived through the 1960s in Kentucky closely deliberated on the best way forward.
He spoke to a number of aides and confidantes, reflecting on his long career in public service that began working as an aide to former Sen. John Sherman Cooper, a Kentucky senator who was instrumental in the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts and — specifically — how hard it was being a pro-civil rights Republican at the time.
McConnell’s anger — and the difficulty he felt responding to the leader of his party — highlights the quandary facing many Republicans in the aftermath of Trump’s comments blaming “both sides” for violence that ended in the death of 32-year-old Heather Heyer.
In the end, McConnell sent out a statement challenging Trump’s position that not everyone who came to the white nationalist rally had hateful beliefs — saying there “are no good neo-Nazis” — without mentioning the president by name.
It was McConnell’s attempt to strike a middle ground. The potential cost of Trump’s incendiary remarks is real. And perhaps few better understand how far the nation and his party have come than McConnell, who was also present both for Lyndon B. Johnson’s signature of the Voting Rights Act and Martin Luther King ’s iconic “I Have a Dream” speech.
The restraint highlights the GOP’s Trump dilemma: Republicans are searching for ways to distance themselves from the president without personally taking on a president who remains popular in many GOP-dominated states.
“Every member I’ve talked to has been apoplectic about it,” said Doug Heye, a Republican strategist who’s worked at the Republican National Committee and in the George W. Bush administration.
“This is just the beginning,” added Heye. “The potential for it to be really bad is real.”
The rift within the GOP could also be seen in how the Republican National Committee responded to Trump’s controversial remarks.
Kayleigh McEnany, the RNC’s new spokeswoman, praised Trump’s “message of love and inclusiveness” on Twitter after the Tuesday statement.
Yet RNC chair Ronna Romney McDaniel said on Good Morning America that “the blame lays squarely on the KKK and white supremacists.”
In the aftermath of Trump’s remarks, many Republicans rushed out statements sending an unequivocal message condemning white supremacists and Nazis — with only some urging the president by name to do the same after days of apparent reversals. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., was one of them. “Mr. President, you can’t allow white supremacists to share only part of blame. They support idea which cost nation & world so much pain,” he tweeted.
For his part, McConnell aimed his statement squarely at dissuading would-be white supremacists in his home state who are planning a rally in Lexington by saying they are “not welcome.”
According to those close to him, McConnell also didn’t rush out a statement because he was hesitant to stoke a narrative about a personal war with the president after Trump has publicly excoriated McConnell for the failure of a bill to repeal and replace Obamacare.
The situation was made all the more delicate given that his wife, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, was standing next to Trump on Tuesday at the event meant to be about infrastructure. McConnell was upset his wife was caught up in the controversy. House Speaker Paul Ryan also criticized racism and white supremacists without naming Trump, who remains at 79% approval among Republicans according to Gallup’s latest polling.