Late update: A McConnell aide told Politico that Warren and the majority leader have spoken “several times,” though he characterized those as exchanges of pleasantries rather than conversations.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) said Friday that since Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) voted in February to use a rarely applied Senate rule to rebuke her, the Republican senator has himself fallen silent.
In an interview with the Boston Globe, Warren said that McConnell has not spoken to her since invoking Rule 19 to effectively silence her reading of a 1986 Coretta Scott King letter criticizing Jeff Sessions, then Trump’s nominee for attorney general.
“I say hello to Mitch every chance I get, and he turns his head,” Warren told the Globe. “I’ve spoken to him, but he has not spoken to me.”
McConnell’s office did not respond to TPM’s request for comment.
McConnell objected in February to Warren’s reading of the letter, and led a vote to use a seldom-invoked rule to keep Warren from speaking again during Senate debate on Sessions’ nomination.
“She was warned. She was given an explanation,” McConnell said, defending his decision after the vote. “Nevertheless, she persisted.”
In an interview aired Sunday by CBS News, Warren declined to say whether sexism played a role in the vote.
“All I can say is the next day four men stood up and read exactly the same letter, and they all got to finish,” she said.