Donald Trump, 74, is lashing out after Kentucky Republican Senator Mitch McConnell said the former POTUS is “practically and morally responsible” for the U.S. Capitol riot during Trump’s second impeachment trial on Jan. 13. Although McConnell still voted to acquit Trump, that didn’t stop the former president from unleashing his anger on his former confidante and calling him an “unsmiling political hack” in an official statement issued on Feb. 16.
Right from the bat, Trump opened his statement with a diss for McConnell, whom the former Republican president had been close to during his time in the office. “The Republican Party can never again be respected or strong with political ‘leaders’ like Sen. Mitch McConnell at its helm. McConnell’s dedication to business as usual, status quo policies, together with his lack of political insight, wisdom, skill, and personality, has rapidly driven him from Majority Leader to Minority Leader, and it will only get worse,” Trump vented in the statement obtained by Politico.
Trump went on to accuse McConnell for being part of the reason as to why the Democrat party won both of Georgia’s Senate seats. “And in ‘Mitch’s Senate,’ over the last two election cycles, I single-handedly saved at least 12 Senate seats, more than eight in the 2020 cycle alone—and then came the Georgia disaster, where we should have won both U.S. Senate seats, but McConnell matched the Democrat offer of $2,000 stimulus checks with $600. How does that work? It became the Democrats’ principal advertisement, and a big winner for them it was,” he wrote.
Trump then took a personal jab at the Republican senator, writing, “Mitch is a dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack, and if Republican Senators are going to stay with him, they will not win again. He will never do what needs to be done, or what is right for our Country.” The 45th U.S. president also accused McConnell of having “no credibility” because of his family’s “substantial Chinese business holdings.” Now, Trump no longer wants to see McConnell in office; he concluded his statement by writing, “This is a big moment for our country, and we cannot let it pass by using third rate ‘leaders’ to dictate our future!”
“And having that belief was a foreseeable consequence of the growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories and reckless hyperbole which the defeated president kept shouting into the largest megaphone on planet earth,” McConnell continued. He then later condemned Trump, saying, “Former President Trump’s actions that preceded the riot were a disgraceful, disgraceful dereliction of duty.” However, the Conservative politician still voted to acquit Trump on the basis that he was now a private citizen, and Trump was eventually found not guilty of incitement of insurrection on a 57-43 vote.