Former President Trump on Monday took aim at Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), as he seeks to punish any Republican he feels was not sufficiently loyal to him amid his attempt to snatch electoral victory from the jaws of defeat.
In an interview on the podcast “The Truth with Lisa Boothe” released Monday morning, Trump quipped that the GOP needs “better” and “stronger” leadership than McConnell.
Trump’s latest swipe at McConnell adds another episode to the former president’s ongoing grudge against the Senate minority leader, who initially scolded Trump on the Senate floor for inciting the mob behind the deadly Capitol insurrection earlier this year. Last month, the former president issued a deranged and racist statement from his Save America PAC threatening to primary the Senate minority leader’s allies. But McConnell has tried to get back into Trump’s good graces since then, telling Fox News last month that he would “absolutely” support Trump if the former president were to run for office again in 2024.
After throwing McConnell under the bus along with Sens. Mitt Romney (R-UT) and Ben Sassse (R-NE) — both of whom voted in favor of Trump’s impeachment after the former president incited the mob behind the deadly Capitol insurrection earlier this year — Trump on Monday complained that the Senate minority leader is doing a poor job of reigning in the GOP because there are senators who dared to buck him.
Trump went on to recall that he warned McConnell that Democrats will try to eliminate the filibuster in order for them to have “a free for all.” The former president claimed that McConnell doubted his supposed fears of the elimination of the filibuster upon Democrats winning a narrow majority in the Senate.
“So if they’re going to knock it out, maybe we should and get everything that we want,” Trump said. “He said they’ll never knock it out. It’ll never happen. They’ll never do it. They don’t want to do it.”
Trump then boasted that McConnell recently admitted the former president was right, referring to the Senate minority leader’s remarks last week expressing his strongest threat yet about abolishing the filibuster. McConnell warned that he would use Senate rules to slow down and force votes on every single small piece of Senate operations if Democrats eliminate the filibuster.
McConnell may have found another way to ruffle Trump’s feathers, however, after reportedly bragging to fellow Republicans that their super PAC had out-raised Trump’s last year. The New York Times’ report of McConnell’s boast came amid the former president sending cease-and-desist letters to at least three Republican organizations to stop fundraising off his name and likeness in an effort to consolidate his large influence on the GOP.
