Trump urges GOP to replace Sen. McConnell

Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday made a slashing and lengthy attack on Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Republican minority leader, calling him a “dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack” and arguing that the party would suffer losses in the future if he remained in charge.

“If Republican senators are going to stay with him, they will not win again,” Trump said.

The 600-word statement, coming three days after the Senate acquitted him in his second impeachment trial, was trained solely on McConnell and sought to paint Trump as the best leader of the GOP going forward. The statement did not include any sign of contrition from Trump for his remarks to a crowd of supporters who then attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6.

Rather, Trump chose to focus on McConnell as he broke an unusually lengthy silence by his standards, after being permanently barred from Twitter last month because of tweets that he posted during the Capitol riot.

McConnell’s office declined to comment on Trump’s attacks on Tuesday, but the senator has left little mystery about his contempt for the former president. Shortly after he joined the majority of Republican senators Saturday in voting to acquit Trump on the House impeachment charge of “incitement of insurrection,” McConnell excoriated Trump, laying the blame for the deadly riot at his feet and suggesting that further investigations of the former president could play out in the judicial system.

His comments were widely interpreted as an attempt to minimize Trump’s brand of politics within the Republican Party.

“He will never do what needs to be done, or what is right for our country,” Trump said in a statement of McConnell, adding that “where necessary and appropriate, I will back primary rivals who espouse Making America Great Again and our policy of America First.”