McConnell privately called Trump “stupid” and “despicable” after the 2020 election, a new book says

WASHINGTON (AP) — Mitch McConnell said after the 2020 election that then-President Donald Trump was “both stupid and ill-tempered,” a “despicable human being” and a “narcissist,” according to excerpts from a new biography Republican leader in the Senate, which will be released this month.

McConnell spoke privately as part of a series of personal oral histories that he provided to Michael Tackett, deputy Washington bureau chief for The Associated Press. Tackett’s book, “The Price of Power,” is based on nearly three decades of McConnell’s recorded diaries and years of interviews with the normally reserved Kentucky Republican.

The animosity between Trump and McConnell is well known — Trump once called McConnell “a sullen, sullen and serious political hack.” But McConnell’s private comments are by far his most brutal assessment of the former president and could be seized upon by Democrats ahead of the Nov. 5 election. The biography will be published on October 29, a week before Election Day, which will determine whether Trump returns to the White House.

Despite those strong words, McConnell has endorsed Trump’s 2024 candidacy and said earlier this year that “it should come as no surprise” that he would support the Republican Party’s nominee. He shook hands with Trump in June when he visited Republican senators on Capitol Hill.

McConnell, 82, announced this year that he would step down as Republican leader after the election but remain in the Senate until the end of his term in 2026.

McConnell was “counting the days” until Trump left office

The comments about Trump cited in the book came in the weeks before the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. At the time, Trump was actively trying to overturn his loss to Democrat Joe Biden. McConnell feared it would hurt Republicans in two runoff elections in Georgia and cost them the Senate majority. The Democrats won both races.

McConnell publicly congratulated Biden after the Electoral College confirmed the presidential election and the senator warned his fellow Republicans not to challenge 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 leaves office and that Trump’s behavior “only underscores the good judgment of the American people.” They just had enough of the misrepresentations, the outright lies on an almost daily basis, and they fired him.”

“And for a narcissist like him,” McConnell continued, “that’s been really hard to take, and that’s why his behavior since the election is far worse than before, because now he has no filter at all.”

Ahead of the Georgia runoffs, McConnell said Trump was “stupid and ill-tempered and can’t even figure out where his own interests lie.”

Trump also withheld a coronavirus relief 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 desperately need.”

On January 6, shortly after he made those comments, McConnell, along with other congressional leaders, holed up in a secure location and called for reinforcements from Vice President Mike Pence and military officials as Trump supporters stormed the Capitol. As the Senate resumed debate on certifying Biden’s victory, McConnell said in a floor speech: “This failed attempt to obstruct Congress, this failed insurrection, only underscores how important the task before us is for our republic. “

McConnell then went to his office to address his staff, some of whom had barricaded themselves in the office as rioters knocked on their doors. He began to sob quietly as he thanked them, Tackett writes.

“You are my family and I hate the fact that you had to go through this,” he told them.

The next month on the Senate floor, McConnell delivered his harshest public criticism of Trump, saying he was “practically and morally responsible” for the Jan. 6 attack. Still, McConnell voted to acquit Trump after House Democrats impeached him for incitement of insurrection.

Years of doubt and criticism

In a statement to the AP on Thursday, McConnell referred to two fellow Republican senators – JD Vance of Ohio, the vice presidential nominee, and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, both of whom are strong allies of Trump after sharply criticizing him during his first run in 2016 had criticized.

“Whatever I have said about President Trump pales in comparison to what JD Vance, Lindsey Graham and others have said about him, but we are all on the same team now,” McConnell said.

McConnell also had doubts about Trump from the start. Shortly after Trump’s election in 2016, as Congress was certifying the election, McConnell told Biden, then the outgoing vice president, that he believed Trump could be trouble, Tackett writes.

The book details McConnell’s inner thoughts during some of the biggest moments after Trump took office, when McConnell kept his mouth shut and the two men repeatedly argued and made up.

In 2017, when Trump publicly criticized McConnell for the Senate’s failure to repeal the Affordable Care Act, Trump and McConnell had a heated argument over the phone. Weeks passed without contact. Then Trump 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 look more knowledgeable than Donald Trump at a news conference.”

After passing a $1.5 billion tax overhaul that same year, McConnell said, “Suddenly I’m Trump’s new best friend.”

Tackett writes that he blamed Trump for this after the Republicans in the House of Representatives lost their majority in the 2018 midterm elections. Trump “has all the qualities you wouldn’t want in a president,” McConnell said in an oral history at the time, and he was “not very smart, short-tempered, evil.”

In 2022, as Trump continued to criticize McConnell and make racist comments about his wife, former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, McConnell told Tackett, “I can’t think of anyone I would.”

“Every time he shoots 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 the election loss had been “beyond erratic” as he continued to make false allegations of election fraud. “Unfortunately, about half of the Republicans in the country believe whatever he says,” McConnell said.

By 2024, McConnell had endorsed Trump again. He felt he had to do this if he wanted to continue to play a role in shaping the country’s agenda.

“It was the price he paid for power,” Tackett writes.