Then came the [2020] election. Mr. Trump refused to accept the results, making wild and unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud. Mr. McConnell indulged him and refused to recognize President Biden as the winner until he could avoid it no longer after the states certified their electoral votes on Dec. 14. He congratulated Mr. Biden the next day.
The interests of Mr. McConnell and Mr. Trump now sharply diverged, with Mr. McConnell fixated on regaining power in 2022 while Mr. Trump was stuck on 2020, making outlandish allegations that threatened to drive off more suburban voters and imperiled two Georgia seats that went to Democrats on Jan. 5. Then the riot the next day found marauders in the Senate chamber, Mr. McConnell’s sanctum sanctorum.
“This mob was fed lies,” Mr. McConnell declared on Jan. 19, accusing Mr. Trump of provoking the rioters and prompting rumblings that he of all people might vote to convict Mr. Trump in the coming impeachment trial. But he did not. Instead, he voted to acquit Mr. Trump then tried to bury him minutes later while distinguishing between Mr. Trump’s responsibility for the riot and the Trump voters Mr. McConnell and Republican Senate candidates would need next year.
“Seventy-four million Americans did not engineer the campaign of disinformation and rage that provoked it,” Mr. McConnell said. “One person did. Just one.”
Mr. [Karl] Rove said Mr. McConnell handled it well.
“McConnell reads his conference and he knows that, like him, they thought simultaneously that this was a highly partisan process and not good for country, but also that Trump had played a significant role in fomenting Jan. 6,” he said (Hulse “Relationship” 6).
Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell said on Saturday that Donald Trump was “practically and morally responsible” for the insurrection at the US Capitol on 6 January – minutes after voting to acquit the former president in his impeachment trial for that very same act.
McConnell, like the senators who voted in favor of impeachment, was deeply critical of Trump’s conduct leading up to the attack. “They [the mob] did this because they’d been fed wild falsehoods by the most powerful man on Earth because he was angry he lost an election,” McConnell said.
But McConnell argued the Senate could not convict Trump because he had left office before the Senate trial began – a timeline McConnell orchestrated as Senate majority leader after refusing Democrats’ requests to call the Senate into an emergency session in January.
The House impeached Trump for a second time in his final days in office, but McConnell delayed starting the Senate trial until after Joe Biden was sworn in.
McConnell said the Senate was not meant to serve as a “moral tribunal” and said Trump could still be open to criminal prosecution.
“President Trump is still liable for everything he did while he’s in office,” McConnell said. “He didn’t get away with anything yet.”
House majority leader Nancy Pelosi criticized McConnell’s remarks in a press conference on Saturday and said the issue of timing “was not the reason that he voted the way he did; it was the excuse that he used”.
“For Mitch McConnell – who created the situation where it could not have been heard before the 20th, or even begun before the 20th in the Senate – to say all the things he said, oh my gosh, about Donald Trump and how horrible he was and is, and then say, ‘But that’s the time that the House chose to bring it over’ – Oh, no. We didn’t choose. You chose not to receive it,” Pelosi said.
Pelosi was also critical of the “cowardly” Republicans who voted against impeachment after the attack.
“I salute the Republican senators who voted their conscience and for our country,” Pelosi said. “Other Senate Republicans’ refusal to hold Trump accountable for igniting a violent insurrection to cling to power will go down as one of the darkest days and most dishonorable acts in our nation’s history” (Holpuch 1-2).
Mitch McConnell’s opposition to a bipartisan proposal to independently investigate the Capitol insurrection is turning GOP senators against the bill, potentially dooming its prospects in the Senate.
The Senate minority leader informed Republicans on Wednesday that he is opposed to the 9/11-style commission that would probe the deadly Jan. 6 riot, as envisioned by the House. And in the wake of McConnell’s remarks, Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) — who had expressed support on Tuesday for the idea — said he could no longer back the commission in its current form.
…
McConnell had signaled on Tuesday that he was undecided but came down more firmly after another day of deliberations and explained his views in a Wednesday floor speech. The Kentucky Republican called the House’s proposal “slanted and unbalanced” and said the ongoing congressional investigations are sufficient to probe the pro-Trump riot at the Capitol.
“It’s not at all clear what new facts or additional investigation yet another commission could lay on top of the existing efforts by law enforcement and Congress,” McConnell said (Levine and Everett 1).
Shortly before members of Congress left Capitol Hill for their holiday break, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was asked what he hoped to learn from the committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack. I assumed he'd dismiss the bipartisan panel and its relevance.
But he didn't. "I read the reports every day," the Kentucky Republican told reporters, "and it'll be interesting to see what [investigators] conclude."
…
Let's not forget that the original plan was for an independent, 9/11-style commission that would be responsible for investigating the attack. Democratic and Republican leaders negotiated the terms of how such a commission would be structured, and the expectation was that Congress would move forward in a bipartisan way after Democrats effectively endorsed all of the GOP's requests.
McConnell balked anyway. On May 19, the minority leader denounced the bipartisan plan, suggesting an independent investigation wouldn't produce any "new facts."
…
A week later, McConnell told his members a Jan. 6 probe was likely to undermine the party's midterm election message. By May 28, the top Senate Republican was reportedly telling his members he'd consider it "a personal favor" if they opposed the legislation to create an independent Jan. 6 commission.
…
… here we are, seven months later, watching McConnell sing a very different tune. The minority leader who went out of his way to block an independent investigation is now publicly endorsing the House select committee's probe, telling Americans that what investigators "are seeking to find out is something the public needs to know."
What's far from clear is why in the world the Kentuckian's perspective has changed.
Did McConnell learn important new intelligence as a member of the gang of eight? Is this a rhetorical shot across the bow at Donald Trump, who's working desperately to replace McConnell as the top Senate Republican?
I won't pretend to know what the senator is thinking, but as a recent Washington Post analysis concluded, "[What McConnell is] saying is a departure from his party that significantly hamstrings efforts to undermine the committee. And it's certainly worth keeping an eye on" (Benen 1-2).
Top Republican senator Mitch McConnell has attacked Joe Biden’s push for a voting rights bill, underscoring the difficulty the Democrats face attempting to steer legislation through Congress with a narrow majority.
The US president [Joe Biden] has called for his party to jettison the Senate’s longstanding “filibuster” rule, which requires 60 of the 100 senators to agree to advance most legislation, a move that McConnell said would irreparably damage the chamber.
“The president’s rant yesterday was incoherent, incorrect and beneath his office,” McConnell said on the Senate floor on Wednesday, referring to Biden’s speech in Atlanta the day before in which he appealed for voting-rights legislation and called Republicans cowardly for not supporting it.
McConnell accused the president of giving “a deliberately divisive speech that was designed to pull our country further apart”.
…
Donald Trump’s false claims that his 2020 election defeat was the result of fraud inspired a wave of new restrictions on voting in Republican-controlled states last year.
…
Democrats see their voting rights bills as a last chance to counter those before the 8 November elections, when they run the risk of losing their razor-thin majorities in at least one chamber of Congress.
Since Trump’s defeat, Republican lawmakers in 19 states have passed dozens of laws making it harder to vote. Critics say these measures target minorities, who vote in greater proportions for Democrats.
The Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act together would make election day a holiday, expand access to postal voting and strengthen US justice department oversight of local election jurisdictions with a history of discrimination.
“Twelve months ago the president said that politics need not be a raging fire destroying everything in its path,” McConnell said. “But yesterday he poured a giant can of gasoline on the fire.“
Republicans argue that the bills Democrats are proposing are an infringement of states’ rights to run their elections. They come as Trump supporters who have embraced the former president’s false claims of election fraud are running for offices that could give them oversight over local elections. Democrats and election analysts have raised concerns that they could use those posts to influence election outcomes (Incoherent 1-3).
Senator Mitch McConnell is extending an open invitation to Senator Joe Manchin III — come on over to our side.
…
“Why in the world would they want to call him a liar and try to hotbox him and embarrass him?” Mr. McConnell, who is just one Senate seat away from regaining the majority leader title, asked in an interview. “I think the message is, ‘We don’t want you around.’ Obviously that is up to Joe Manchin, but he is clearly not welcome on that side of the aisle.”
…
Mr. McConnell’s appeal to Mr. Manchin came as the Republican leader celebrated the year coming to a close without Democrats advancing two of their most ambitious priorities: legislation to bolster voting rights and the sprawling domestic policy bill that Mr. McConnell characterized as part of a “socialist surge that has captured the other side.”
Considering how Republicans began 2021 — in the minority in Congress, a newly elected Democrat poised to move into the White House and a public worn down by a pandemic and alarmed by an assault on the Capitol — Mr. McConnell and his colleagues say they have had a successful year. In some respects, it was all the things they did not do that may have served them best.
They did not maneuver themselves into shutting down the government as they have in the past — despite demands from the right that they never work with Mr. Biden. And they did not allow the government to default, with Mr. McConnell providing Democrats a circuitous path to raising the debt ceiling. Either could have created a backlash for Republicans.
As Democrats spent months trying to hammer out the huge policy bill among themselves, Republicans were relegated to the sidelines. Mr. McConnell said Democrats’ inability to come together on it so far reflected a misreading of the 2020 elections, when voters gave them the White House but bare majorities in both the Senate and the House.
“They did not have a mandate to do anything close to what they tried to do,” said Mr. McConnell, suggesting that progressive “ideology overcame their judgment.”
The decision by Mr. McConnell and other Republicans to help Democrats write and pass a separate, $1 trillion public works bill was, Mr. McConnell said, a smart one, even though Republican supporters of the measure took heat from others in the party, notably Mr. Trump.
…
… Senator Chuck Schumer, the New York Democrat and majority leader, also intends to press forward with voting rights measures fiercely opposed by Mr. McConnell and is threatening to try to change Senate rules if Republicans try to filibuster it again.
Democrats say Mr. McConnell is being complicit in allowing some states to impose new voting restrictions meant to target voters of color, a charge he rejects, saying that the impact of the new laws is being exaggerated. He said he was relying on Senator Kyrsten Sinema, the Arizona Democrat who recently reaffirmed her opposition to changing filibuster rules, to hold steady.
“Kyrsten Sinema has been quite unequivocal that she is not going to break the Senate and eliminate the legislative filibuster,” he said. “Thank goodness for that.”
…
Mr. McConnell said he believed his party’s performance this year and the struggles of the Democrats were setting Republicans up for a strong midterm election next year and his potential return to running the Senate no matter what party Mr. Manchin is in. Despite Mr. Trump’s efforts to encourage candidates he favors in key Senate races, Mr. McConnell said he was intent on avoiding the type of primary contests that in the past have hurt Republicans by saddling them with primary winners who falter in general elections (Hulse “McConnell” 1-3).
Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, pushed back hard on Tuesday against the Republican Party censure of Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger and its characterization of the Jan. 6 riot as “legitimate political discourse,” saying the riot was a “violent insurrection.”
The remarks from Mr. McConnell, the normally taciturn Kentucky Republican, added to a small but forceful chorus of G.O.P. lawmakers who have decried the action that the Republican National Committee took on Friday, when it officially rebuked Ms. Cheney and Mr. Kinzinger for participating in the House investigation of the Jan. 6 attack, accusing them of “persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.”
Mr. McConnell repudiated that description, saying of the events of Jan. 6, 2021: “We saw it happen. It was a violent insurrection for the purpose of trying to prevent the peaceful transfer of power after a legitimately certified election, from one administration to the next. That’s what it was.”
…
Mr. McConnell’s comments were a rebuke of how far the party has gone to deny the reality of the violence that unfolded during the bloody assault on the Capitol, sending lawmakers from both parties running for safety. More than 150 people were injured in the attack, which led to several deaths, and nearly 750 individuals have been criminally charged in connection with it.
In the days since the Republican National Committee passed the resolution at its winter meeting in Salt Lake City, a handful of Republicans have criticized the move as everything from a political distraction to a shame on the party. Mr. McConnell, who orchestrated the impeachment acquittal of former President Donald J. Trump and blocked the naming of an independent, bipartisan commission to examine the attack, was among the most blunt in his defense of the only Republicans serving on the committee that rose from that proposal’s ashes.
“Traditionally, the view of the national party committees is that we support all members of our party, regardless of their positions on some issues,” he said. “The issue is whether or not the R.N.C. should be sort of singling out members of our party who may have different views of the majority. That’s not the job of the R.N.C” (Weisman and Karni 1-3).
Works cited:
Benen, Steve. “Mitch McConnell Changes His Tune about the Jan. 6 Investigation.” MSNBC, December 28, 2021. Net. https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/mitch-mcconnell-changes-his-tune-about-jan-6-investigation-n1286683
Holpuch, Amanda. “Mitch McConnell Savages Trump – Minutes after Voting To Acquit.” The Guardian, February 13, 2021. Net. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/feb/13/mitch-mcconnell-trump-republicans
Hulse, Carl. “McConnell to Manchin: We’d Love To Have You, Joe.” New York Times, December 21, 2021. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/21/us/politics/mcconnell-manchin-republican.html
Hulse, Carl. “The Relationship between McConnell and Trump Was Good for Both — Until It Wasn’t.” New York Times, February 19, 2021. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/19/us/trump-mcconnell-republicans.html
“‘Incoherent, Incorrect’: McConnell Dismisses Biden’s Push for US Voting Rights Bill.” The Guardian, January 13, 2022. Net. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jan/13/us-senator-attacks-bidens-rant-in-favour-of-voting-rights-bill
Levine, Marianne and Everett, Burgess. “McConnell Turns Senate Republicans against Jan. 6 Commission.” Politico, May 19, 2021. Net. https://www.politico.com/news/2021/05/19/mcconnell-opposes-houses-bipartisan-jan-6-commission-bill-489573
Weisman, Jonathan and Karni, Annie. “McConnell Denounces R.N.C. Censure of Jan. 6 Panel Members.” New York Times, February 8. 2022. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/08/us/politics/republicans-censure-mcconnell.html
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