Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., took sharp shots at former President Trump in a new interview, calling him "diminished" and deserving of blame for the party's underwhelming showing in the midterms.
McConnell told NBC News that Trump’s candidates in the midterm elections contributed to the idea that the GOP is "sort of nasty and tended toward chaos."
McConnell and Trump have been at odds many times throughout the former president’s political career, with tensions spilling over since Democrats defied predictions and gained a seat in the U.S. Senate in November, denying the GOP a return to the majority. Senate candidates backed by Trump like Herschel Walker in Georgia and Blake Masters in Arizona lost races that Republicans viewed as solid pickup opportunities.
Both Republican Party leaders blamed the other for the poor showing, with the NBC News interview revealing the latest digs against Trump from the McConnell camp.
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"In a rare and pointed criticism of the former president, who's seeking a comeback in two years, McConnell said Trump’s power is on the wane and called on him to back off Senate primaries," NBC News reported.
McConnell told the outlet, "Here’s what I think has changed: I think the former president’s political clout has diminished."
McConnell may have been pointing to recent polling indicating that Republican voters are giving a serious look at Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2024, despite Trump already launching his re-election campaign last month.
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In the interview the GOP leader added that because of Trump’s political decline, he and his allies at the Senate Leadership Fund super PAC are "less inclined to accept cards that may be dealt to us."
"We can do a better job with less potential interference. The former president may have other things to do," he said, suggesting Trump shouldn't meddle in primaries.
McConnell also claimed that Trump tarnished the party’s image for the midterms, implying that because of him Republican candidates underperformed. In swing states like Arizona and Georgia, McConnell told NBC News that the GOP’s underperformance with persuadable moderates was "fatal."
"We lost support that we needed among independents and moderate Republicans, primarily related to the view they had of us as a party — largely made by the former president — that we were sort of nasty and tended toward chaos," he said.
He added, "And oddly enough, even though that subset of voters did not approve of President Biden, they didn’t have enough confidence in us in several instances to give us the majority we needed."
The lawmaker also explained why he didn’t intervene in more of the primaries to put in safer GOP candidates. He said, "In the other states, Trump’s support was so significant — we could have spent a lot of money, maybe trying to come up with a different candidate and maybe not succeeding. And so my conclusion was that everywhere else, we had to play with the cards that were dealt."
McConnell claimed he "looked at the landscape" and "believed he had only two chances to pick favorites against flawed candidates: in Missouri, to defeat scandal-plagued Eric Greitens, and in Alabama, to stop far-right Rep. Mo Brooks," NBC's Sahil Kapur wrote.
