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Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is apparently unfazed about his low approval numbers among Republican voters in national polls, the GOP lawmaker indicated on Thursday.
The Kentucky Republican sat for nearly an hour-long live interview with Axios in the morning, where he also dismissed journalist Jonathan Swan’s attempt to confront him on his about-face over supporting Donald Trump in 2024.
‘There’s no obvious challenge to your leadership. People like to gin it up, but there isn’t. And yet recent polls show your approval rating is in the 30s among Republicans,’ Swan said. ‘Why do they hate you?’
McConnell, the most powerful elected Republican in Washington, chuckled before beginning his response.
‘Look — there are two constituents that are important to doing this job. The people of Kentucky, who have sent me here seven times, and the Republican members of the Senate, who elected me eight times without opposition,’ the lawmaker said.
‘My job is not to run up political popularity nationally. I’m not running for anything nationally.’
However he admitted that any official leading a political party often ‘irritated’ people in multiple ways.
‘One hundred percent of the opposition doesn’t like you. And you have to make decisions between factions at various times, and frequently you don’t have that great of support internally,’ McConnell said.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell sat down for a wide-ranging live interview on Thursday
‘So as I said, the two constituents that matter to me are the people at home and the people in the Senate.’
Among elected officials, McConnell has always been on the bottom rung in numerous favorability polls — both for Republicans and Democrats. It’s a contrast from the approval numbers of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, which are known to be low in general, though they rise significantly when just their own party is polled.
He dismissed his low approval rating among GOP voters as ‘the price of leadership’ — even after being confronted with the high popularity that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi typically enjoy among Democrats.
Pressed about the disparity again, McConnell said curtly: ‘Well if I had a theory about it, I wasn’t going to sit here and discuss it with you.’
At another point in the interview, the senator said he felt it was his ‘obligation’ to support whoever was the Republican nominee in 2024 — even if it was Trump, who has publicly called for McConnell’s ouster from Senate leadership and Congress as a whole.
He appeared to be more receptive to Trump and his influence within the GOP than the Kentucky senator has been in the past
McConnell was asked about seemingly contradictory statements denouncing Trump over the Capitol riot and then later declaring he’d back the ex-president’s re-election bid.
He had said Trump was ‘practically and morally responsible’ for the January 6 insurrection in February 2021 but said later that same month he would ‘absolutely’ support him if he were the Republican nominee for president in the next election cycle.
McConnell attempted to explain on Thursday, ‘Well as the Republican leader of the Senate, it should not be a front page headline that I will support the Republican nominee for president.’
‘I think I have an obligation to support the nominee of my party. And I will.’
Speaking over the journalist’s attempts, McConnell continued, ‘That will mean that whoever the nominee is has gone out and earned the nomination.’
He vehemently denied that his views were ‘inconsistent,’ insisting that ‘I stand by everything I said.’
Trump and McConnell’s relationship fractured amid the fallout from last year’s insurrection.
Since then the former president has repeatedly bashed the Kentucky senator as an ‘old Crow’ and McConnell reportedly worked behind the scenes to try and get less pro-Trump Republicans elected to Congress.
On Thursday, however, McConnell sang a different tune.
He held up Trump-backed Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker, a former football star who was accused of assault by his ex-wife, as an ‘exemplary citizen.’
McConnell said Walker ‘admitted he has some troubles in his life.’
‘I think Walker is completely electable,’ he said. ‘We’re fully behind him.’
It was reported by Politico last summer that McConnell was concerned Walker’s checkered past could be a vulnerability if he ran for Democrat Senator Raphael Warnock’s seat in November 2022.
However, the GOP leader also stood by his incumbents in the Senate who are critical of Trump and face losing their seats to a primary challenger with the ex-president’s support.
He said it was ‘important,’ for example, for Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski fend off state official Kelly Tshibaka, who Trump has endorsed. It’s worth nothing that Tshibaka previously said she would support challenging McConnell’s iron grip on the Senate GOP.