Mitch McConnell finally breaks with Donald Trump
At some point Donald Trump’s ongoing refusal to concede is going to become a strategic problem for Senate Republicans, who are looking to win the Georgia runoffs by pushing the notion that the GOP needs to retain control of the Senate as a check on President Biden. How can the Republicans push that message until Trump admits he’s lost? That may finally be coming to a head.
Mitch McConnell has the most on the line here, as the runoffs will determine whether he remains Senate Majority Leader. Thus far McConnell has publicly given generic credence to the notion that Trump might somehow find some way to magically win the election. But now that Trump is looking to withdraw U.S. troops from the Middle East, McConnell is using it as an opportunity to break with Trump.
McConnell is suddenly insisting that withdrawing our troops would “hurt our allies and delight the people who wish us harm” and would be “humiliating.”
In other words, Mitch McConnell is now signaling that he’s just about done with Donald Trump. We award McConnell absolutely no points for this, as he should have done it a week ago, and he’s only doing it now for selfish reasons. And keep in mind that McConnell never stops playing both sides, so tomorrow he might make a point of saying something positive about Trump. But the upshot is that McConnell is finally breaking from Trump – and let’s be real here, McConnell is probably the one person who’s in a position to force Trump to shut down his grift sooner than he’d like to and go quietly.
