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Not even a month after taking to the Senate floor to deliver a scathing speech blaming the January 6 Capitol riot on Donald Trump, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has reiterated that he’d back Trump if the former president ran for election in 2024.
Notably, McConnell shielded Trump from impeachment twice. The second time, he argued that the former president couldn’t be impeached because he was no longer in office. This reasoning flummoxed Democrats, many of whom suggested this meant a sitting president could do anything he wanted, as long as he was out of office before an impeachment trial about it got to the Senate.
McConnell’s apparent waffling, defending Trump, then blaming him, has earned the ire of both Republicans and Democrats alike. Now, McConnell is saying he would “absolutely” support Trump if he ran for president in 2024.
Mitch McConnell, the senior senator from Kentucky, told reporters from Fox News that there was still a lot of time between now and the next presidential race. “I’ve got at least four members that I think are planning on running for president, plus governors and others,” McConnell told reporters. “There’s no incumbent. Should be a wide-open race.”
The reporters zeroed in on Trump, specifically, and asked if McConnell would support the former president if he won the nomination of the Republican Party in the 2024 primaries. McConnell, a long-serving politician, is stuck between a rock and a hard place with Trump.
The Kentucky Republican is clearly unsure of how to handle the explosive personality and unwavering popularity of Donald Trump. Trump has widespread support from the Republican voting base, even after losing his reelection bid to Joe Biden. Some pundits expected McConnell to be more loose with his criticisms over Trump’s conduct once the former president left office.
Instead, McConnell is caught in a tough balancing act. On the one hand, he knows that the party suffered losses in the House, Senate and White House since Trump’s 2016 election. On the other hand, Republicans still back Trump in large numbers, and McConnell himself could be primaried if he comes down hard on the former president.
So, where does that leave him? Adrift, in a strange spot, unable to fully articulate his distaste for a highly-popular provocateur who has bewildered the media and delighted his supporters all at once. McConnell knows that the future of the Republican Party probably looks more like Trump than the old-school conservativism of Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush.
