Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) pushed the bogus claim that he has not spoken to President Biden since his inauguration in January during an interview on Fox News Wednesday.
Appearing on Fox News on Wednesday, McConnell swiped at the White House for supposedly shifting to the “hard left” while claiming that he had barely spoken to Biden since the President entered office.
The Senate minority leader claimed that he had not been invited to the White House either as he attempted to insinuate that Biden is failing to live up to his bipartisan promises.
“I haven’t been invited to the White House, so far this administration is not interested in doing anything on a bipartisan basis in the political center,” McConnell said. “There’s been no efforts whatsoever by the President or the administration to do anything in the political center. It’s been trying to jam through everything on the hard left.”
But McConnell’s remarks to Fox News contradict his comments last months to reporters, when the Senate minority leader said that he and Biden had conversations about the political unrest in Myanmar as well as the budget process and COVID-19 relief legislation.
Mitch McConnell on Fox News today:
“I don’t believe I’ve spoken with [Biden] since he was sworn in."
Mitch McConnell on Feb. 2:
“The president called me on two things: Burma was one of them. The other…[was] the budget process and covid relief.”https://t.co/w5E64LjdNP pic.twitter.com/tRbSlAuJAx
— JM Rieger (@RiegerReport) March 24, 2021
However, McConnell clarified his comment later Wednesday, according to CNN. McConnell’s office reportedly acknowledged that the Senate minority leader and the President discussed the Myanmar coup last month, but maintained that McConnell has had no discussions with Biden regarding “efforts to reach bipartisan consensus” on the economic agenda.
Hours after McConnell’s remarks to Fox News and CNN, White House press secretary Jen Psaki disputed the notion that the President and McConnell aren’t on speaking terms during a briefing on Wednesday.
After noting that McConnell “corrected” his remarks on Fox News, Psaki said that Biden has a “long friendship” with McConnell, who the President speaks to “regularly.”
McConnell has been historically reluctant toward reaching bipartisan agreements when a Democratic president is in office, with his most recent crusade against the Senate majority being his threat to turn the Senate into “a sort of nuclear winter” if Democrats succeeded in eliminating the filibuster.
McConnell also came under fire for his remarks to the National Journal in 2010, saying that “the single most important thing” Republicans want to achieve is for then-President Barack Obama to be “a one-term president” in order for the GOP to achieve its legislative goals, such as the repeal of the Affordable Care Act.
