Many Senate Republicans were done with Trump after Jan. 6. Now they want him back in the White House
WASHINGTON — Three years ago, Donald Trump had few friends left in the Senate.
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said in a speech that Trump was “practically and morally responsible” for the violent January 6, 2021: Attack on the Capitol by spreading “wild untruths” about election fraud and trying to overturn his re-election defeat.
After the House impeached Trump for his actions, seven Republicans stood with Democrats and declared Trump guilty. He was acquitted, but several Republican senators — even some who still publicly supported him — distanced themselves from the former president. Many were certain that his political future was over.
But that wasn’t the case. Trump is now the party’s presumptive nominee to challenge President Joe Biden. And on Thursday, he returned to Capitol Hill to meet with Republicans — the first such official meetings since his presidency — to enthusiastic and near-unanimous support from the Senate GOP conference, including many of the same senators who condemned him for his actions in trying to secure President Joe’s legitimate victory to block Biden. McConnell shook his hand and fist bumped him several times.
The hard feelings and all memories of the violent end of his presidency seemed to have faded completely.
“I think that’s in the rearview mirror for most people,” Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said of the 2020 election. “There’s always going to be tension there. But I think most Republicans really see President Trump as the only way to change this country. And they are excited about the opportunity.”
The former president’s embrace by Republican senators comes after years of ups and downs. With few exceptions, senators have never supported him as consistently and eagerly as their Republican counterparts in the House of Representatives. But now that he is running again, Senate Republicans are supporting Trump more enthusiastically than ever.
The Senate’s zealous support is partly rooted in self-interest.
Republicans have a good chance of winning the Senate majority in November, and they know Trump’s support is crucial to that end, especially in solidly Republican states like Ohio and Montana, where Democratic incumbents are struggling to hold on.
And they’re already starting to talk about what they’ll do if Trump wins and they win both houses of Congress. House Speaker Mike Johnson attended a Republican Senate luncheon Wednesday to discuss, among other things, the possibility of tax legislation if Republicans gain full control.
“Our ability to get a majority in the Senate is intrinsically tied to Trump winning,” he said. Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina said this after the meeting with Johnson. “So we’re like: one team, one vision.”
Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, who is running to replace McConnell as Republican leader when he steps down in November, said the party faces a “binary choice” between Trump and Biden.
“There is no Plan B,” said Cornyn, who had called Trump “reckless” after the attack on the Capitol. “I think people know the strengths and weaknesses of both candidates. And for me, I think President Trump is clearly preferable.”
Cornyn added, “His support is going to be important in a lot of these states where he’s very popular, where we have Senate races.”
It is not the first time that Republicans have supported Trump again after an attempt at a clean breakthrough.
The arguments and the whiplash are a familiar pattern. For example, McConnell fully supported Trump in the days before he was elected in 2016, just weeks after the release of a decade-old tape in which Trump was caught on a hot mic bragging to a famous news anchor about grabbing women by their genitals . . McConnell called Trump’s comments “abhorrent and unacceptable under all circumstances.”
Many other Republican senators had been cool to Trump on the campaign trail that year and were outraged by the tape. Senator Mike Lee of Utah, now one of Trump’s most loyal backers, recorded a video calling on Trump to step aside, saying he was “a distraction from the principles that will help us win in November .” South Dakota Senator John Thune, who is also a candidate to replace McConnell, also called on Trump to withdraw from the race. But he later backtracked on those comments.
Once he was elected, Republican senators publicly rallied behind Trump, joined him on policy and cheered his conservative Supreme Court picks. Most of them defended him during the tumultuous investigations into his campaign’s ties to Russia and rarely criticized him, fearing they would be called out by the president on social media and face the wrath of conservative voters.
After Trump lost re-election, very few senators supported his false claims of fraud, especially after the courts dismissed multiple lawsuits and the Electoral College certified the votes. Thune and Cornyn both criticized his efforts to reverse his defeat in Congress in the days before January 6, with Thune saying he thought the plan would fail “like a bull’s-eye.”
Trump later said on Twitter that Thune was a “RINO,” or Republican in name only, whose “political career (is) over!!!”
And after the violence of January 6, few had nice words to say.
“Count me out,” Graham said in the hours after Trump supporters violently beat police officers and ransacked the Capitol. “Enough is enough.”
But in the weeks, months and years that followed, most of them softened — especially as several Trump allies were newly elected to the Senate and Trump faced several charges that Republicans see as politically motivated. By early this year, most of the Senate GOP conference had endorsed his third run for the White House, including McConnell, Thune and Cornyn.
By the time he was convicted in a hush-money trial in New York late last month, he had broad and unified support from the Republican Senate Conference.
“Now more than ever, we must rally behind @realdonaldtrump, take back the White House and the Senate, and get this country back on track,” Cornyn said in a statement.
Although he struck a positive tone during Thursday’s Senate meeting and even praised McConnell at one point, Trump’s rhetoric hasn’t changed much. He still claims the 2020 election was stolen, calls the rioters jailed for violence on Jan. 6 “hostages” and says he will pardon them, and has consistently bashed the judges overseeing his trials.
A handful of senators remain skeptical. Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, who both voted to convict Trump after Jan. 6, skipped the meeting with Trump. Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who also voted to convict, and Sen. Todd Young of Indiana, who declined to endorse the former president, were both present but declined to answer questions from reporters afterward.
Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota, who once called Trump a “jerk” after saying the former president had not won re-election, also attended the rally and endorsed him. He said Republicans had a good working relationship with Trump until the 2020 election, but that “many of us disagreed with some of the analysis that was done.”
Senators will have to “work through this issue,” Rounds said, by focusing on what they can agree on.
“We’re going to focus on what we need to do to restore the economy, bring back strong defenses, try to put out a lot of the fires that are going on around the world, and focus on policy,” he said. .