(The Hill) — Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) privately slammed former President Donald Trump as “stupid as well as being ill-tempered” and “a despicable human being” after the 2020 election, according to a biography of the senator set to be released later this month.
McConnell, who publicly feuded with Trump for much of the past four years, also criticized the former president as a “narcissist” and admitted after the 2020 election that “it’s not just the Democrats who are counting the days” until he left office.
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The long-serving GOP leader made his comments as part of a series of personal oral histories provided to Michael Tackett, The Associated Press’s deputy Washington bureau chief.
Tackett included the details in his biography of McConnell, “The Price of Power,” which will be released later this month. The AP reported on excerpts of the book Thursday.
McConnell made his scathing comments about the former president in the lead-up to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, when Trump was trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
He and Trump split publicly after McConnell recognized then-candidate Joe Biden as the winner of the election following the vote of the Electoral College in mid-December of 2020.
McConnell strongly denounced Trump’s actions in the lead-up to the Jan. 6 riots, declaring on the Senate floor at the end of the former president’s second impeachment trial that he was “practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day.”
And he called Trump’s actions preceding the riot “a disgraceful dereliction of duty.”
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Republican senators have told The Hill that members of their conference also viewed Trump as largely responsible for their Senate majority because he harshly criticized the fairness of the election process in Georgia — depressing GOP voter turnout — ahead of a crucial runoff election in which Democrats defeated Sens. David Perdue (R) and Kelly Loeffler (R).
McConnell did not speak to Trump for years after that falling out and they didn’t meet again in person until June, when the GOP presidential nominee met with Republican senators at the National Republican Senatorial Committee headquarters on Capitol Hill.
McConnell shook Trump’s hand at that event. The Senate minority leader also endorsed Trump for president earlier this year, explaining that he always said he would support the Republican nominee for president in 2024, even if it was Trump.
Trump made it abundantly clear after the 2020 election that he did not like McConnell and accused him at times of foiling his agenda in Congress, even though McConnell helped pass the former president’s signature tax reform package and confirm three of his conservative nominees to the Supreme Court.
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In a statement released by his political action committee in February of 2021, Trump declared: “The Republican Party can never again be respected or strong with political ‘leaders’ like Sen. Mitch McConnell at its helm.”
He fumed that “Mitch is a dour, sullen, and unsmiling hack, and if Republicans are going to stay with him, they will not win again.”
McConnell offered a gesture toward making amends in March when he endorsed Trump for president.
“It is abundantly clear that former President Trump has earned the requisite support of Republican voters to be our nominee for president of the United States,” he said in a statement at the time. “It should come as no surprise that as nominee, he will have my support.”
