Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) expressed disappointment on Thursday that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) attended the meeting with former President Trump at the National Republican Senatorial Committee’s headquarters on Capitol Hill on Thursday.
In an interview on CNN’s “Erin Burnett OutFront,” Schumer was asked whether he was surprised that McConnell shook Trump’s hand at their meeting — the first time the two Republican leaders had spoken since their fallout in 2020.
“Well, let me just say this. I think there are a good number of Republicans, McConnell included, who know deep in their hearts and deep in their minds what a danger he is to democracy, and what a disaster he’d be as president,” Schumer said.
“McConnell should have had the courage not to show up. He knows, I think, he knows deep in his heart what Trump is like and what Trump would do,” Schumer added.
Trump returned to Capitol Hill for the first time since the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, and he met with House Republicans before having lunch with Senate Republicans.
McConnell — who has been critical of the former president but then endorsed his candidacy once it became clear Trump would clinch the 2024 presidential nomination — spoke positively to reporters about the meeting Thursday.
“We had a really positive meeting. He and I got a chance to talk a little bit, shook hands a few times,” McConnell said after the meeting.
“It was an entirely positive meeting,” he added. “I can’t think of anything out of it to tell you that was negative.”
Relations between Trump and McConnell have been strained since McConnell recognized Joe Biden as the president-elect after the vote of the Electoral College in mid-December 2020.
McConnell opposed Trump’s effort to block the certification of Biden’s victory in Congress on Jan. 6, 2021, the same day a mob of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in a failed attempt to stop the proceeding.
The Senate GOP leader excoriated Trump’s actions in the lead-up to the attack on the Capitol when he denounced him on the Senate floor in February 2021 as “practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day.”
Trump has regularly taken shots at McConnell in recent years, mocking him as “old crow” and disparaging his wife, former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, as “Coco Chow” and his “China-loving wife.”