After the Capitol riot was finally brought under control on January 6, 2021, Mitch McConnell spoke from the Senate floor in unequivocal terms. The majority leader at the time said the Senate would carry out its duties “according to regulations” and would not be deterred by attempted intimidation by a violent mob. McConnell said the rioters tried and failed to disrupt American democracy. The Senate certified Joe Biden’s election, but America’s catechism of a peaceful transfer of power was tainted.
It was a moment of moral clarity for McConnell about the threat posed by Donald Trump, but it didn’t last long. Rather, it was just a prelude to the kind of contradictions that characterized his time as one of the country’s most powerful leaders.
Mr. McConnell made his decision about Mr. Trump well before January 6th. A month after Election Day, McConnell and Trump had not spoken. At the time, Trump berated McConnell for acknowledging the obvious fact that Joe Biden was fairly elected in the electoral vote. Trump’s “post-election actions have become increasingly divorced from reality,” McConnell told me. “And it seems to me that he made up an alternate world of how things happened.” He said Trump was under the “delusion” that he had somehow won and was listening to “clowns” who acted as his personal lawyers.
In a late December 2020 interview with an oral historian, he called Trump a “despicable human being” and said he was “stupid and ill-tempered at the same time.” McConnell said Trump’s actions after the election “only confirm the good judgment of the American people.” They were fed up with the false reporting and outright lies on an almost daily basis and fired him. And for a narcissist like him, that was really hard to accept. ”
McConnell told historians the following week that Jan. 6 was “a shocking event and further proof that Donald Trump is completely unfit for office.” Reflecting on the trauma of that day, McConnell said: “It’s hard to imagine that not only the system was attacked, but the very building itself was attacked, something like this could happen in a country that has had a stable democracy for many years.” said. He later added: “I was very nervous.” He was disgusted by the damage done to the Capitol itself. “They broke the windows,” McConnell said. “They were narcissists, just like Donald Trump, and they were taking pictures of themselves sitting in the vice president’s chair.”
This article is adapted from Michael Tackett’s new book, The Price of Power.
A call was immediately made to investigate the cause of the riot. Polls show a majority of Americans support the survey. The House passed a bipartisan bill that would create a commission modeled after the one that investigated the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and with an equal number of Democrats and Republicans. Thirty-five House Republicans joined Democrats in supporting the bill.
The bill then went to the Senate, where Mr. McConnell reversed course. He said a congressional committee had the ability to conduct an investigation and that the commission was largely a Democratic ploy to “reexamine” that day and Trump’s role in it. . So he thwarted perhaps the country’s greatest chance to fully uncover what happened on May 28, less than six months after he risked his life in the riot.
Mr. McConnell was well aware that he would be criticized, and like many other times during his time in the Senate, he did not let that deter him from his larger goals. He said a few weeks ago that he was focused on blocking “100 percent” of Biden’s policies. McConnell’s best bet to overcome this threat would be to win back just one Senate seat in the 2022 midterm elections, giving Republicans back the majority and regaining the position he coveted.
While abandoning the committee could easily be seen as a greedy concession to the right wing of the party, Mr. McConnell has an unsentimental view of tactics and strategies that won’t lead to victories or majorities. Mr. McConnell blocked the investigation by invoking the filibuster and requesting support from some Republicans, including Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, as an unusual “personal favor.” Mr. McConnell was concerned that Mr. Trump would encourage more fringe candidates who have disappointed Republicans in previous elections. Unless Trump becomes a centripetal force in the midterm elections, when the president’s party usually suffers heavy losses, Democrats will be in a position to defy history and maintain control of Congress. So Mr. McConnell ignored the insult and chose what he thought was the surest path back to the majority.
Even more impressive was how Mr. McConnell approached another potential remedy for dealing with Mr. Trump: a second impeachment.
A week after the Capitol riot, McConnell said in an oral history interview that the House would likely impeach Trump soon. “People hearing this years from now may wonder what the point is. In any case, he plans to step down on January 20th,” he said. Ta. “But apparently someone can be impeached after they leave office, and if that happens, a simple majority vote in the Senate will trigger a second vote to prevent that person from ever holding office again. So not only can he be impeached, but he can also be excluded from any chance of returning to this administration. So that’s a big deal, but it’s a trend. It was showing.
McConnell said it would be difficult to get a vote in the Senate before Trump leaves office. He spoke with Biden about the challenges of forming a Cabinet if the Senate becomes embroiled in an impeachment trial. The Senate also had scheduled a vacation. Still, it was at least theoretically possible to reopen the session to deal with impeachment.
“I’m not at all conflicted about whether the president’s conduct is an impeachable offense. I think it is,” McConnell said in the oral history. “Inciting an insurrection and having people attack the Capitol as a direct result of that is about as close to an impeachable crime as you can imagine, except maybe being an agent of another country.” Even so. , he believed that the Senate could not impeach a person after leaving office, based on his legal opinion. He had not yet decided how he would vote.
Democrats pushed to impeach Trump, and the House of Representatives quickly moved to impeach him. Until the day of the Senate vote, it was unclear which direction Mr. McConnell would go. “I wish he had voted to convict Donald Trump, and I think he was absolutely convinced he was guilty,” Sen. Mitt Romney said. But he added that McConnell believed it was a bad precedent to convict someone who is no longer in office. Romney said he sees McConnell’s political calculations as “Donald Trump is no longer on the political stage…Donald Trump is politically finished.”
George F. Will, an Owl intellectual columnist who has expertly argued conservative causes for half a century, was a longtime friend and admirer of McConnell. They share a love of history, baseball, and the twisted glory of the era of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. On February 21, 2021, Will sent advance copies of his Washington Post column to a select group of conservatives, a little-known habit of his. One avid reader and recipient was Sen. Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana, who found the column particularly interesting. Will argues that Republicans like Cassidy and McConnell should override the will of the “Routt caucus,” which includes Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Marco Rubio and Ron Johnson. named.
“This was written on a Friday (Saturday), so the only thing in question is the size of the Republican majority that sees no evil.” Will has no doubts. He hated Trump. He hoped others, including friends, would vote for conviction. The last sentence of his early release was in parentheses: “(Perhaps, but the revival began on Saturday, when a rare Mitch McConnell voted ‘yes.’)” Will Will Signs McConnell’s Vote information about their long relationship was either given or based on speculation.
Cassidy said she thought that meant McConnell influenced Will to vote, so she called Will on Saturday. Will told him that this column was premature and that he was submitting a replacement.
His new column highlighted McConnell’s decision to vote to acquit, saying the time is “not entirely ripe” for the party to make an effort to oust Trump. “The breadth and depth of Trump’s hatred is unmatched by McConnell’s,” Will wrote in the published version. Nevertheless, “Mr. McConnell knows that politics has to do the heavy lifting in reducing President Trump’s influence.” Mr. McConnell’s focus was on the 2022 midterm elections.
Will told me he didn’t remember writing an earlier version.
On the morning of the Senate impeachment vote, there was still speculation among both Republicans and Democrats that Mr. McConnell would vote to convict Mr. Trump. The beginning of his statement certainly hinted at that.
“January 6th was a shameful day,” McConnell began. “Americans attacked their own government. They use terrorism to try to shut down certain domestic businesses they don’t like. Those same Americans beat their own police to blood. They stormed the Senate chamber. They tried to corner the Speaker of the House. They built a gallows and talked about killing the Vice President.
“They did this because the most powerful man on the planet was angry and fed outrageous falsehoods. He lost the election. Former President Trump’s actions were There is no question that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for causing the events of that day. ”
In her memoir, then-Congresswoman Liz Cheney, who lost the Republican primary election the following year due to her criticism of Trump, wrote that McConnell was at one point a firm believer that Trump should be impeached. However, she wrote in her memoirs that she did not do so. I started to wonder about his “determination.” When Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky introduced a motion that said the trial was unconstitutional because Trump was no longer president, McConnell voted in favor of it and told Cheney that his position had changed. It showed that there is.
Her concerns were justified, and McConnell made the political decision to reverse his strong belief that Trump had committed an impeachable crime.
McConnell thought Cheney had made a mistake. “What I was different from Liz was that I didn’t understand how self-destructing and walking away from the arena would help get the party back to where she and I probably think it should be,” McConnell said. told me. He later added: “A self-sacrificing act like hers might sell books, but it won’t have the impact of changing a party. That’s where we differ.”
Cheney believed that McConnell had abdicated his duty and responsibility to do more to remove Trump from the Republican Party. In a post to X, she said: “Mitch McConnell knows that Trump incited the violent attack on the Capitol…Knows that Trump refused for hours to tell the rioters to leave…He said Trump was ‘shameful. “We know they committed a dereliction of duty…Trump and his presidential collaborators will be defeated and the shame of those who enabled them, like @LeaderMcConnell, will be history.”
McConnell is trying to maintain his standing with Republicans and keeping in mind what happened to senators like Mitt Romney, who was ostracized by many in his party simply for standing up for his principles. , decided not to vote for conviction. He argued that the constitution does not provide for such penalties after a president leaves office. There’s plenty of debate on this point, but for McConnell, as always, the political rationale was good enough. Mr. Biden was also one of the people who understood politics. In an interview in the Oval Office, he told me: “I understand the rationale of, ‘If I don’t do this, I might disappear,’ but I don’t agree with it.”
Mr. McConnell’s goal was to maintain the Senate majority. He wanted the energy of Trump voters in the Senate race without carrying Trump’s baggage. He bet on the belief that Trump would disappear from the political scene in the aftermath of the insurrection. Instead, Mr. Trump has once again become a force in every respect among his core supporters. This was perhaps the worst political miscalculation of Mr. McConnell’s career.
This article is adapted from Michael Tackett’s new book, The Price of Power.
The price of power: How Mitch McConnell took control of the Senate, changed America, and lost his party.
Written by Michael Tackett
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