Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) on Tuesday said that he has not spoken with former President Trump since December 15, the day after McConnell finally accepted the reality that Joe Biden won the election when the Electoral College sealed Biden’s victory.
In a news conference shortly before senators were sworn in for Trump’s second impeachment trial on Tuesday, McConnell was asked about whether he views Trump’s incitement of the mob that breached the Capitol earlier this month as impeachable and when he last spoke with the former president.
After dodging the question of whether Trump’s actions were impeachable, McConnell claimed that it was December 15 when he and Trump last spoke, the day after McConnell declared on the Senate floor that Biden “obviously” won the election following the Electoral College sealing Biden’s victory last month.
“The Electoral College has spoken,” McConnell said in his Senate floor speech on December 14, nodding to the Electoral College’s affirmation of Biden’s victory the day before..“So today I want to congratulate President-elect Joe Biden.”
McConnell’s arrival on Planet Earth to congratulate Biden came after his months-long stint of being a quiet foot soldier in Trump’s delusional efforts to undermine democracy. Days after Biden’s win was projected by major news outlets, McConnell argued that Trump has “every right to look into allegations and to request recounts under the law,” backing Trump’s weaponization of the courts over bogus claims of widespread election fraud.
The news predictably did not sit well with Trump.
In a retweet of a Daily Mail article headlined “Trump’s allies slam Mitch McConnell for congratulating Biden,” Trump swiped at McConnell a day after the then-Senate majority leader could no longer deny that Biden was heading to the White House.
“Mitch, 75,000,000 VOTES, a record for a sitting President (by a lot),” Trump wrote in his retweet of the Daily Mail article. “Too soon to give up. Republican Party must finally learn to fight. People are angry!”
