McConnell called Trump 'stupid,' 'despicable' in private, according to new book

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said after the 2020 election that then-President Donald Trump was “stupid as well as being ill-tempered” and a “despicable human being."

ByMARY CLARE JALONICK AP October 17, 2024, 5:00 AM1/2

WASHINGTON – WASHINGTON (AP) — Mitch McConnell said after the 2020 election that then-President Donald Trump was “stupid as well as being ill-tempered," a “despicable human being" and a “narcissist,” according to excerpts from a new biography of the Senate Republican leader that will be released this month.

McConnell made the remarks in private as part of a series of personal oral histories that he made available to Michael Tackett, deputy Washington bureau chief of The Associated Press. Tackett’s book, “The Price of Power,” draws from almost three decades of McConnell’s recorded diaries and from years of interviews with the normally reticent Kentucky Republican.

The animosity between Trump and McConnell is well known — Trump once called McConnell " a dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack." But McConnell's private comments are by far his most brutal assessment of the former president and could be seized on by Democrats before the Nov. 5 election. The biography will be released Oct. 29, one week before Election Day that will decide if Trump returns to the White House.

Despite those strong words, McConnell has endorsed Trump’s 2024 run, saying earlier this year “it should come as no surprise” that he would support the Republican party's nominee. He shook Trump’s hand in June when Trump visited GOP senators on Capitol Hill.

McConnell, 82, announced this year that he will step aside as Republican leader after the election but stay in the Senate through the end of his term in 2026.

The comments about Trump quoted in the book came in the weeks before the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Trump was then actively trying to overturn his loss to Democrat Joe Biden. McConnell feared this would hurt Republicans in two Georgia runoffs and cost them the Senate majority. Democrats won both races.

Publicly, McConnell had congratulated Biden after the Electoral College certified the presidential vote and the senator warned his fellow Republicans not to challenge the results. But he did not say much else. Privately, he said in his oral history that “it’s not just the Democrats who are counting the days” until Trump left office, and that Trump’s behavior “only underscores the good judgment of the American people. They’ve had just enough of the misrepresentations, the outright lies almost on a daily basis, and they fired him.”

“And for a narcissist like him,” McConnell continued, “that's been really hard to take, and so his behavior since the election has been even worse, by far, than it was before, because he has no filter now at all.”

Before those Georgia runoffs, McConnell said Trump is “stupid as well as being ill-tempered and can’t even figure out where his own best interests lie.”

Trump was also holding up a coronavirus aid package at the time, despite bipartisan support. “This despicable human being,” McConnell said in his oral history, “is sitting on this package of relief that the American people desperately need.”

On Jan. 6, soon after he made those comments, McConnell was holed up in a secure location with other congressional leaders, calling Vice President Mike Pence and military officials for reinforcements as Trump supporters stormed the Capitol. Once the Senate resumed debate over the certification of Biden's victory, McConnell said in a speech on the floor that “this failed attempt to obstruct the Congress, this failed insurrection, only underscores how crucial the task before us is for our republic.”

McConnell then went to his office to address his staff, some of whom had barricaded themselves in the office as rioters banged on their doors. He started to sob softly as he thanked them, Tackett writes.

“You are my family, and I hate the fact that you had to go through this,” he told them.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/mcconnell-called-trump-stupid-despicable-private-after-2020-114884151

>>21783649

2/2

The next month, McConnell gave his harshest public criticism of Trump on the Senate floor, saying he was “ practically and morally responsible ” for the Jan. 6 attack. Still, McConnell voted to acquit Trump after House Democrats impeached him for inciting the riot.

In a statement to the AP on Thursday, McConnell referenced two fellow Republican senators — JD Vance of Ohio, the vice presidential nominee, and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, both of whom are strong Trump allies after harshly criticizing him during his first run in 2016.

“Whatever I may have said about President Trump pales in comparison to what JD Vance, Lindsey Graham, and others have said about him, but we are all on the same team now,”McConnell said. (What does that mean?)

McConnell also had doubts about Trump from the start. Just after Trump was elected in 2016, as Congress was certifying the election, McConnell told Biden, then the outgoing vice president, that he thought Trump could be trouble, Tackett writes.

The book channels McConnell’s inner thoughts during some of the biggest moments after Trump took office, as McConnell held his tongue and as the two men repeatedly fought and made up.

In 2017, as Trump publicly criticized McConnell for the Senate's failure to repeal the Affordable Care Act, Trump and McConnell had a heated argument on the phone. Weeks went by with no contact. Then Trump invited McConnell to the White House and called a joint news conference without telling him first. McConnell said the event went fine, and “it’s not hard to look more knowledgeable than Donald Trump at a press conference.”

After the passage of a $1.5 trillion tax overhaul that same year, McConnell said, “All of a sudden, I’m Trump’s new best friend.”

He blamed Trump after House Republicans lost their majority in the 2018 midterm elections, Tackett writes. Trump ”has every characteristic you would not want a president to have,” McConnell said in an oral history at the time, and was “not very smart, irascible, nasty.”

In 2022, as Trump continued to criticize McConnell and made racist comments about his wife, former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, McConnell told Tackett that “I can’t think of anybody I’d rather be criticized by than this sleazeball.”

“Every time he takes a shot at me, I think it's good for my reputation,” McConnell said.

Also in 2022, McConnell said in his oral history that Trump's behavior since losing the election had been “beyond erratic” as he kept pushing false allegations of voter fraud. “Unfortunately, about half the Republicans in the country believe whatever he says,” McConnell said.

By 2024, McConnell had again endorsed Trump. He felt he had to if he were to continue to play a role in shaping the nation’s agenda.

“It was the price he paid for power,” Tackett writes.

This story has been corrected to reflect that the size of the tax overhaul under Trump was $1.5 trillion, not $1.5 billion.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/mcconnell-called-trump-stupid-despicable-private-after-2020-114884151

Calling-all-RushBabes

Dedicated to the Memory of the Great Rush Limbaugh

About An American’s Creed My Photos Recommended Reading

Information about North Carolina and the hurricane/flood response: Wendy Patterson on X/Twitter

ON OCTOBER 16, 2024 BY RUSHBABE49IN AUTHORITARIANISM, BUSINESS, CULTURE, ECONOMICS, ELECTIONS, ENVIRONMENTALISM, GOVERNMENT, GUEST BLOGGER, LAW AND JUSTICE, MEDIA BIAS, POLITICS IN THE AGE OF TRUMP, RANDOM MUSINGS ABOUT LIFE, TRANSPORTATION

Once again, I will post this in its entirety for those who are not following Wendy on X/Twitter (she is @wendyp4545). This gives us a look into conditions prevailing in NC before the hurricanes and floods decimated the western part of the state, as well as eastern Tennessee.This also offers a look at the behavior of the state and federal governments, and especially North Carolina’s DemocRat Governor, Roy Cooper. Frankly, this is disgusting. Your government is working against you.

To the Litigation Attorneys representing all of the people in North Carolina who lost everything because of the flood and who will not have money to rebuild because they didn’t have flood insurance: There are a few things that you need to know.

A)FEMA didn’t update the flood zone maps for decades so the people who purchased their properties didn’t know they bought land in a flood zone. FEMA didn’t do their job.- Maria in the Morning interview 10-15-2024

B)Duke Power opened the dam that caused the water that created mudslideswhich then caused the roadways to fail and rivers to flood.

C)The River monitors were broken and had been brokenand were reported by homeowners in the area near Chimney Rock.

D)No evacuation was given until after Duke Power opened the dam after the mudslides began.

E) Video testimony exists of victims who didn’t receive evacuation notices until the mudslide events were in progress.

F) FEMA Spokesman on Fox interview 10-14-2024 said that the Governor has to request FEMA.Governor RoyCooper was partying in New York and did not call in FEMA Searchand Rescue causing many people who could have been rescued to lose their lives.

G)Many of the Representatives in North Carolina were conveniently out of state or townincluding the Mayor of Chimney Rock. – Video testimony exists.

Given this information, I suggest that it is imperative that you all vote for President Donald Trump in November, to drain the swamp.

https://rushbabe49.com/2024/10/16/information-about-north-carolina-and-the-hurricane-flood-response-wendy-patterson-on-x-twitter/

Georgia

Secretary of State

Brad Raffensperger

SOS Office

Elections

The Elections Division

Voter Information

Stop Voter Fraud

Candidate Qualification

Election Results and Stats

==BreadcrumbHome The Elections Division of the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office > The Elections Division of the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office > Election Data Hub - Turnout==

To interact with the data, double click on the map or graph.

https://sos.ga.gov/page/election-data-hub-turnout

>>21783707

TOTAL BALLOTS CASTED THUS FAR

Trump War Room

@TrumpWarRoom

PRESIDENT TRUMP: We have a Second Amendment, and I'm very strongly an advocate of that. If you have a house out in the country or you're in a rough area, and the bad guy has a gun — if you don't have a gun you're finished. The toughest gun laws in the United States, by far, is in Chicago. And that's got one of the worst records of any city.

10:51 PM · Oct 16, 2024

·63.2K Views

https://x.com/TrumpWarRoom/status/1846745724782104859

'Illegal, unconstitutional and void': Georgia judge strikes down new election rules after legal fights. The rules were passed in September by a GOP majority on the State Elections Board

By Elizabeth Elkind Fox News Published October 16, 2024 8:00pm EDT

(FUCKING JUDGES!)

A Georgia judge struck down several rules recently passed by the State Elections Board (SEB) Wednesday, measures that were a subject of fierce debate between Trump and Harris surrogates in the key battleground.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Thomas A. Cox ruled the new provisions "illegal, unconstitutional and void" in an opinion released Wednesday evening, according to multiple outlets.

It comes hours after he weighed two lawsuits related to the rules, one led by the Georgia Democratic Party and a second by civil rights groups that included current and former GOP state officials.

One of the measures, a requirement for all ballots to be hand counted by three county election officials after they had been machine tabulated to ensure the totals match, has become a political lightening rod in recent weeks.

That rule was temporarily blocked in a separate ruling Tuesday night challenging the SEB’s new measures. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney did not take issue with the rule’s intent but argued it would be untenable at this late stage.

Cox’s ruling invalidates that measure, while also invalidating a rule directing county officials to conduct a "reasonable inquiry" before certifying election results and giving them the ability "to examine all election related documentation created during the conduct of elections."

Cox also blocked new signature and photo ID requirements for people dropping off absentee ballots for others.

The rules were passed last month in a 3-2 vote by the Republican majority on the elections board.

Democrats had accused the GOP officials of trying to sow doubt and chaos in the election process, while supporters of the rule changes said they were necessary guardrails to ensure voter confidence.

In the wider ranging of the two cases Wednesday, led by Eternal Vigilance Action, a group founded by former GOP state legislator Scot Turner, the plaintiffs argued the SEB was out of its scope of authority in establishing the new rules.

"Three members of the state election board, kind of like Napoleon, they put a crown on their head and say, ‘We are the emperors of election,’" the plaintiffs’ lawyer said. "No, that is not the way our system of government works."

But the defendants and supporting groups, including attorneys for the Georgia Republican Party, argued the state’s General Assembly gave the SEB the scope to craft such rules.

"They don't say which one of those statutes should be found unconstitutional because, remember, to rule in favor of the plaintiffs here, you're going to have to find that the General Assembly's grant of authority to the agency was unconstitutional," a lawyer for the GOP said.

"They don't say which one of the three powers we have that they violated. Could be all three of them. Could be one of the three. And if it's a constitutional challenge, you can't have something that's that vague to bring into a court to ask you to declare it to be unconstitutional."

Both former President Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaigns have dedicated significant time and resources to Georgia, which President Biden won by less than 1% in 2020.

Harris’ campaign lauded Tuesday's ruling that blocked the hand-counting ballots rule, declaring, "Our democracy is stronger thanks to this decision."

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/illegal-unconstitutional-void-georgia-judge-strikes-down-new-election-rules-after-legal-fights

(I voted in GA on the 15th, almost EVERY JUDGE in GA are Democrats)