McConnell slams Trump as ‘diminished,’ says he won’t let ‘candidate quality’ doom 2024
Rachel Schilke
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Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) says he will not let the unfavorable qualities surrounding former President Donald Trump ruin the Republican Party‘s chances for success in 2024.
McConnell, like many top GOP leaders, blames Trump for the party’s less-than-expected performance in the 2022 midterm elections.
FOUR TIMES MITCH MCCONNELL CRITICIZED DONALD TRUMP’S POOR JUDGMENT
Most of Trump’s endorsed candidates lost their races, whose far-right campaigns pushed centrist Republicans and independents, important swing voters, to vote for Democrats, McConnell said in an interview with NBC News. He said he is not going to let the mistakes of 2022 happen again, saying he will “actively look for quality candidates” for the 2024 primary season.
McConnell added that he thinks Trump’s power is on the decline and asked him to step away from interfering in the Senate primaries come next year.
“Here’s what I think has changed: I think the former president’s political clout has diminished. We can do a better job with less potential interference. The former president may have other things to do,” he said.
He added that Trump’s diminished standing has made McConnell and his allies within the Senate Leadership Fund super PAC less likely to “accept cards that may be dealt to us.”
McConnell said that the GOP underperformed in “every state,” including Arizona, Ohio, New Hampshire, and Georgia.
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“We lost support that we needed among independents and moderate Republicans, primarily related to the view they had of us as a party, largely made by the former president, that we were sort of nasty and tended toward chaos. And oddly enough, even though that subset of voters did not approve of President Biden, they didn’t have enough confidence in us in several instances to give us the majority we needed,” the Senate Republican said.
Animosity between Trump and McConnell has been growing since the midterm elections ended, particularly after Trump said he was running for president just a week after Election Day.