The GOP leader also said the American people showed “good judgment” in firing Trump in 2020, given his “erratic” behavior making false claims of election fraud and delaying the Covid package.”I think I’m pretty safe in saying it’s not just “The Democrats who are counting the days until he leaves on January 20,” McConnell said, “but the Republicans as well.”
An institutionalist who had served for decades in the Senate, McConnell was sickened by what happened at the Capitol on Jan. 6. The insurrectionists were “narcissistic, just like Donald Trump, sitting in the vice president’s chair taking pictures of themselves,” Tackett’s book quotes him saying. The events were “further evidence of Donald Trump’s complete unfitness for office.”
After speaking on the Senate floor after the attack, McConnell addressed his staff, some of whom rode out the attack by barricading themselves in the Capitol, Tackett wrote. McConnell, a former Senate staffer himself, told his staffers how brave they were and that he appreciated them.
“McConnell, a man often characterized as almost soulless and possessing no emotion, started to sob softly, along with many on his staff,” Tackett wrote. “’You are my staff, and you are my responsibility,’ McConnell told them. ‘You are my family, and I hate the fact that you had to go through this.’”
A month later, McConnell voted to acquit Trump in his Jan. 6 impeachment trial, although he did called him “practically and morally responsible” for the attack.
In Tackett’s book, McConnell said he was certain that Trump’s actions amounted to an “impeachable offense” but he wrestled with the question of whether a former president could be impeached. Ultimately, McConnell voted to acquit Trump.
McConnell had also been furious at Trump over his racist attacks on McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, who served as Trump’s Transportation secretary. The GOP leader said he could take a punch but that his wife should be off limits. “I can’t think of anyone I’d rather be criticized by than this sleazeball,” McConnell told Tackett. “So every time he takes a shot at me, I think it’s good for my reputation.”
Trump and McConnell, who is stepping down as the Senate Republican leader this year, have publicly feuded for years. But McConnell endorsed Trump for president earlier this year, saying he always planned to endorse the 2024 GOP nominee. The leader even appeared with Trump during his meeting with Senate Republicans in June just off Capitol Hill.
But less than three weeks before the election, the timing of McConnell’s damning remarks about Trump can’t be helpful to the nominee, who’s locked in a neck-and-neck battle with Vice President Kamala Harris.
“The Price of Power,” published by Simon & Schuster, will be out on Oct. 29, one week before Election Day.
