Trump blasts McConnell over claims in book about election

Former President Trump on Monday lashed out at Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), incensed by a forthcoming book that reports McConnell urged former Attorney General William Barr to push back on Trump’s falsehoods after November’s election.

Trump implied that had McConnell intervened to block the certification of President Biden’s electoral votes, the Senate GOP leader would not be in a position where he is navigating bipartisan infrastructure talks.

“Had Mitch McConnell fought for the Presidency like he should have, there would right now be Presidential Vetoes on all of the phased Legislation that he has proven to be incapable of stopping,” Trump said in a Monday statement, reiterating his belief that Republicans lost both Senate runoff races in Georgia in January because of McConnell.

“He never fought for the White House and blew it for the Country,” Trump said. “Too bad I backed him in Kentucky, he would have been primaried and lost!”

Trump has, over the past 24 hours, been fixated on a newly published excerpt from ABC News correspondent Jonathan Karl’s upcoming book, “Betrayal,” in which Barr described the rapidly deteriorating relationship he had with Trump as the then-president became more entrenched in his belief that the 2020 election was fraudulent.

Barr told Karl that McConnell, at the time the Senate majority leader, had urged him to push back against Trump’s falsehoods, worrying that Trump’s rhetoric would cost the GOP in January’s Senate runoff elections in Georgia. Democrats went on to win both races and control of the Senate as a result.

“Now it was revealed that Barr was being pushed to tell lies about the election by Mitch McConnell, another beauty, who was worried about damaging the Republicans chances in the Georgia runoff,” Trump said in a statement late Sunday. “What really damaged the Senate Republicans was allowing their races to be rigged and stolen, and worse, the American people to no longer believe their vote matters because spineless RINOs like Bill Barr and Mitch McConnell did nothing.”

Trump’s statements attacking McConnell are his latest broadsides against the Republican leader, who easily won reelection in 2020. McConnell has previously brushed off Trump’s criticisms, saying in late April the party is “looking to the future, not the past.”

McConnell and Trump worked together throughout Trump’s four year term to pass the GOP agenda, but the two have not spoken in months.

Senate Republicans have blamed Trump’s false claims of widespread voter fraud for damaging them in Georgia, where the losses cost them the Senate majority. Though McConnell voted to acquit Trump in his second impeachment trial, he also denounced him from the Senate floor as “morally responsible” for the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, where a pro-Trump mob breached the building for hours.