Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell was reportedly “thrilled” by what he believed to be the decline of Donald Trump’s reputation after last year’s Jan. 6 riot in the Capitol, a new book excerpt claimed Monday.
“He put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger,” the Senate Minority Leader said after the ex-president’s supporters stormed the US Capitol.
He added that it “couldn’t have happened at a better time”.
McConnell spoke to one of the New York Times journalists behind a new book, This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America’s Future, in the early hours of January 7, 2021 — after Congress confirmed President Joe Biden’s victory had after the riot.
“I feel exhilarated by the fact that this fellow has finally completely discredited himself,” the Kentucky legislature said, according to an excerpt obtained by the Washington Post.
He announced at the time that he was considering a joint statement with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the two leading Democrats in Congress, calling for Trump to stay away from Biden’s inauguration.
McConnell even reportedly told his staff that Trump was a “despicable person” after the riot.
Speaking to New York Times reporter Jonathan Martin, the longtime lawmaker compared his goal of purging the GOP of Trump supporters to his earlier attack on far-right Republicans in the 2014 election.
McConnell said Trump “completely discredited himself” during an interview in the early hours of Jan. 7, 2021, and that it “couldn’t have happened at a better time.”
“We crushed the b****es’ sons,” McConnell bluntly recalled.
“And that’s what we’re going to do in elementary school 22.”
McConnell was one of Trump’s harshest critics immediately after January 6, declaring in the Senate: “The mob was fed lies. They were provoked by the President and other powerful people.”
However, he was not one of the seven Senate Republicans who voted to impeach him.
Video of those post-riot remarks was shared by Fox News host Sean Hannity with Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows, according to new text messages between the two released by CNN on Monday.
“Well this is as bad as it gets,” Hannity wrote of the January 19, 2021 video.
But McConnell has since retracted his criticism of Trump. He has thrown support for pro-Trump candidates like Herschel Walker, who is running in November to unseat Georgia Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock.
Excerpts from a forthcoming book on Trump and Biden reveal explosive new details about how close Republican leaders came to dumping the former president in the immediate aftermath of the riots — though many have since re-adopted him
He later said he would support Trump in a potential reelection bid in 2024 and stood by the comments, which were pressured by Axios earlier this month.
“Well, as Republican leader of the Senate, it shouldn’t be a front-page headline that I’m going to endorse the Republican nominee for president,” McConnell said April 7.
“I think I have an obligation to support my party’s candidate. And I will.’
Speaking over journalist Jonathan Swan’s heckling, McConnell continued, “That means whoever the nominee is, went out and deserved the nomination.”
He vehemently denied that his views were “conflicting” and insisted that “I stand by everything I’ve said”.
For his part, Trump also pissed off McConnell after the uprising. He frequently attacked the senator over the past year for voting on Biden’s $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure compromise.
The former president declared McConnell the most disliked politician in history in an April 7 interview with the Post.
“I’m going to run everyone over McConnell,” he said, echoing previous claims that McConnell’s rule of the GOP must end.
Despite this, the longtime Republican leader enjoys near-unreserved support among his peers.
The forthcoming report on the end of Trump’s presidency and the start of Biden’s presidency reveals new details about the extent of GOP leadership’s anger in the wake of the uprising.
It was the source of a New York Times report which revealed that House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy had said he would ask the ex-president to step down over last year’s Capitol riots.
McCarthy denied the call, and the Times and other media outlets released audio that proved the Republican lawmaker had those conversations with his fellow GOP leaders.