McConnell called Trump ‘stupid,’ ‘despicable’ in private, according to new book
WASHINGTON — Mitch McConnell said after the 2020 election that then-President Donald Trump was “stupid and ill-tempered,” a “despicable human being” and a “narcissist,” according to excerpts from a new biography of the Senate Republican leader. will be released this month.
McConnell made the comments privately as part of a series of personal oral histories he made available to Michael Tackett, deputy bureau chief of The Associated Press in Washington. Tackett’s book, “The Price of Power,” is based on nearly three decades of McConnell’s diaries and years of interviews with the usually reticent Republican.
The animosity between Trump and McConnell is well known – Trump once called McConnell ‘ a stern, gruff and unsmiling political hackBut the Republican leader’s personal comments are by far his boldest assessment of the former president and could be seized upon by Democrats before the election. The biography will be released on October 29, a week before the vote that will decide whether Trump returns to the White House.
Despite these strong words, McConnell has done just that supported Trump’s 2024 runwho said earlier this year that “it shouldn’t be a surprise” that he would support the Republican Party’s nominee. He shook hands with Trump in June when he visited GOP senators on Capitol Hill.
McConnell, 82, made the announcement this year he will step aside as GOP leader after the election, but will remain in the Senate until the end of his term in 2026.
The comments about Trump quoted in the book came in the weeks before the January 6, 2021: Attack on the Capitol. Trump then actively tried to reverse his defeat and McConnell feared this would hurt Republicans in two runoff elections in Georgia, costing him his Senate majority. Democrats ultimately won both races.
Publicly, McConnell had done so congratulated Joe Biden after the Electoral College certified the presidential vote and warned his fellow Republicans not to question the results. But he didn’t say much more. 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 underlines the good judgment of the American people. They just had enough of the misrepresentations, the outright lies that occur almost every day, and they fired him.”
“And for a narcissist like him,” McConnell continued, “that’s very difficult to accept, and that’s why his behavior since the election has been much worse than before, because now he has no filter at all.”
Ahead of the Georgia elections, McConnell said Trump is “stupid, bad-tempered and can’t even figure out where his own interests lie.”
Trump also held one Corona aid package at the time, despite bipartisan support. “This despicable human being,” McConnell said in his oral history, “is sitting on this relief package that the American people so desperately need.”
On January 6, 2021, shortly after making these 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. As the Senate resumed debate on the certification of Biden’s victory, McConnell said in a speech on the floor that “this failed attempt to obstruct Congress, this failed insurrection, only underlines how crucial the task before us is for our republic is.”
He 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 began to sob quietly as he thanked them, Tackett wrote.
“You are my family, and I hate that you had to go through this,” he told them.
The following month, McConnell delivered his sharpest public criticism of Trump on the Senate floor, saying that he “ practically and morally responsible ” for the January 6 attack. Still, McConnell voted to acquit Trump after House Democrats impeached him for inciting the riot.
The Republican leader 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 cause problems, Tackett writes.
The book captures McConnell’s inner thoughts during some of the biggest turning points after Trump came to power, when McConnell kept his mouth shut and the two men repeatedly fought and made up.
In 2017, when Trump publicly criticized McConnell over the Senate the failure to repeal the Affordable Care ActTrump and McConnell had a heated argument on the phone. Weeks passed without contact. Trump then invited McConnell to the White House and called a joint press conference without telling him first. McConnell said the event went well, and “it’s not hard to come across as more knowledgeable than Donald Trump at a press conference.”
After passing A $1.5 billion tax overhaul that same year, McConnell said, “Suddenly 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 all the characteristics you wouldn’t want in a president,” he said in an oral history at the time, and was “not very smart, short-tempered, mean.”
In 2022, as Trump continued to criticize him and make racist comments about his wife, former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, McConnell told Tackett, “I can’t think of anyone I’d rather be criticized by than this sleazeball.”
“Every time he shoots 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 “extremely erratic” as he continued to make false allegations of voter fraud. “Unfortunately, about half of the Republicans in the country believe what he says.”
In 2024, McConnell had again endorsed Trump. He felt this was necessary if he wanted to continue playing a role in shaping the country’s agenda.
“It was the price he paid for power,” Tackett writes.