WASHINGTON (AP) – Mitch McConnell said after the 2020 election that then-President Donald Trump was “stupid and short-tempered,” a “despicable human being” and a “narcissist,” a new biography shows. This was revealed in an excerpt. Senate Republican leaders to be released this month.
McConnell made the remarks privately as part of a series of personal oral histories he provided to Associated Press Washington bureau chief Michael Tackett. Mr. Tackett’s book, “The Price of Power,” is based on nearly 30 years of Mr. McConnell’s diary records and years of interviews with the usually reticent Kentucky Republican.
The animosity between Mr. Trump and Mr. McConnell is well known, with Mr. Trump once calling Mr. McConnell a “sullen, grumpy, unsmiling political hack.” But Mr. McConnell’s personal comments are the most brutal assessment yet of the former president, and could be in the hands of Democrats before the Nov. 5 election. The biography is scheduled to be published on October 29, one week before the vote that will decide whether Trump returns to office. White House.
Despite those strong words, McConnell supports Trump’s 2024 candidacy and said earlier this year that it was “not surprising” that he would support the Republican candidate. He shook hands with President Trump when he visited Republican senators at the U.S. Capitol in June.
McConnell, 82, announced earlier this year that he would step down as Republican leader after the election but would remain in the Senate until his term expires in 2026.
McConnell was ‘counting the days’ until Trump leaves office
The comments about Trump cited in the book were made weeks before the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. At the time, Trump was actively trying to overturn his loss to Democrat Joe Biden. Mr. McConnell feared this would hurt Republicans in Georgia’s two runoff elections and cause them to lose the Senate majority. Democrats won both elections.
McConnell publicly congratulated Biden after the Electoral College certified the presidential vote and senators warned their fellow Republicans not to challenge the results. But he didn’t say much more. Privately, he said in an oral history that “Democrats are not the only ones counting down the days” until Trump leaves office, and that Trump’s actions “only underscore the good judgment of the American people.” They fired him because he had had enough misrepresentations and outright lies on an almost daily basis. ”
“And for a narcissist like him, that’s really unacceptable, and his behavior after the election is much worse than before, because he has no filter at all now. ” McConnell continued.
Ahead of Georgia’s runoff elections, McConnell said Trump was “stupid and ill-tempered and doesn’t even know what his own best interests are.”
At the time, President Trump also floated a coronavirus aid package despite bipartisan support. “This despicable human being,” McConnell said in his oral history, “is sitting on this relief package that the American people desperately need.”
Shortly after making those remarks, on January 6, as Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, McConnell, along with other Congressional leaders, holed up in a secure location and called for reinforcements from Vice President Mike Pence and members of the military. requested. As the Senate resumed debate over the certification of Biden’s victory, McConnell said in a speech on the floor: “This failed attempt to obstruct Congress and the failure of this insurrection are a stark reminder of how important the task before us is to our nation. It just highlights how important it is.”
Mr. McConnell then went to his office to speak to his staff, some of whom barricaded themselves inside the office as the mob banged on the door. He began to sob quietly, thanking them, Tackett wrote.
“You are my family. I’m so sorry you had to go through this,” he told them.
The following month, McConnell delivered his harshest public criticism of Trump on the Senate floor, saying Trump was “practically and morally responsible” for the Jan. 6 attack. Still, McConnell voted to acquit Trump after House Democrats impeached him for inciting the riot.
Years of suspicion and criticism
In a statement to The Associated Press on Thursday, McConnell mentioned two Republican senators, running mate J.D. Vance of Ohio and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. Both men were harsh critics of Trump when he first ran for office in 2016 and have become strong allies of Trump. .
“Nothing I say about President Trump pales in comparison to what people like J.D. Vance and Lindsey Graham have said about him, but now we’re all on the same team,” McConnell said. ”
Mr. McConnell also had doubts about Mr. Trump from the beginning. Shortly after Trump’s election in 2016, as Congress was certifying the election, McConnell told Biden, then the outgoing vice president, that he thought Trump could be a nuisance. , Tackett wrote.
The book conveys McConnell’s inner thoughts during the most important moments of Trump’s presidency, when McConnell remained silent and the two men fought and made up.
In 2017, Trump and McConnell had a heated argument over the phone when President Trump publicly criticized McConnell for failing to get the Senate to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Weeks passed with no contact. President Trump then invited McConnell to the White House and called a joint press conference without telling him anything in advance. McConnell said the event went well, saying, “It’s not difficult to look like you know more than Donald Trump at a press conference.”
After the $1.5 trillion tax reform was passed that same year, McConnell said, “All of a sudden I’m Trump’s new best friend.”
Tackett wrote that he criticized Trump after House Republicans lost their majority in the 2018 midterm elections. McConnell said in an oral history at the time that Trump had “all the traits you don’t want in a president”: “He wasn’t very smart, he had a short temper, he was a mean person.”
In 2022, as President Trump continued to criticize McConnell and make racist comments about his wife, former Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao, McConnell asked Tackett, “I can’t think of anyone who wouldn’t want to be criticized as much as this vulgar language.” No,” he said.
“Every time he fires at me, I think it’s good for my reputation,” McConnell said.
Also in 2022, McConnell said in an oral history that Trump’s actions since losing the election had been “erratic” as he continued to push false claims of voter fraud. “Unfortunately, about half of the Republicans in the country believe everything he says,” McConnell said.
By 2024, McConnell supported Trump again. He felt he had to do so in order to continue to play a role in shaping national policy.
“That was the price he paid for power,” Tackett writes.
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This article has been corrected to reflect that the size of Trump-era tax reform was $1.5 trillion, not $1.5 billion.
