Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell have profane shouting match; McConnell thinks Trump is a goner
Even as some Republicans in Congress have publicly distanced themselves from Donald Trump and others have been allegedly saying much worse about him in public, one would have expected Mitch McConnell to be Trump’s last remaining ally. McConnell helped suppress the Russia scandal during the election. Trump gave McConnell’s wife a job in return. But now it turns out the relationship between Trump and McConnell has become so toxic that they’ve essentially become enemies.
There was some hint at this when Donald Trump began publicly needling Mitch McConnell a few weeks ago in the wake of the TrumpCare debacle. But even those tweets were relatively tame, and came off as if they may have been mere posturing. Now, however, a new report from the New York Times (link), things have gotten so bad between the two that they ended up having a “profane shouting match” over the telephone. And it gets even worse.
That same NYT report says that McConnell is now privately questioning whether Trump can survive. McConnell’s support for Trump in his role as Senate Majority Leader is crucial to Trump’s survival, yet now McConnell is signaling that he thinks Trump is a goner. That’s probably his way of trying to make it a self fulfilling prophecy. Although the Senate plays no role in initiating House impeachment hearings, McConnell withdrawing his support for Trump would send a strong signal to House Republicans. This timing of this story is also notable.
Based on the point of view from which the bulk of the New York Times article is presented, it’s fairly clear that Mitch McConnell had his own people feed these details to the newspaper in order to make this story happen. This is, in effect, McConnell’s way of publicly throwing Trump under the bus in the hope that he doesn’t get dragged down by Trump’s failures such as Charlottesville. Now we wait to see whether Trump, McConnell, both or neither survive their feud.
