Mitch McConnell Didn’t Want Donald Trump To Win The Election, Journalist Says

In a Monday piece for The Intercept, journalist Ryan Grim argued that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell didn’t want Donald Trump to win re-election.

The writer noted McConnell’s longtime opposition to a second round of stimulus checks before the election and his focus on helping Georgia Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, whose Senate races next month will determine whether the Republican Party holds onto the upper chamber.

In particular, the columnist pointed out that the GOP lawmaker could have agreed to an additional stimulus for Americans before the election, which the head of state had expressed openness to on multiple occasions.

“The option was available to him. Even if Democratic leaders would have preferred to pass the stimulus after the election, their obstruction beforehand would either have been politically untenable or, if held firm, politically suicidal,” he wrote.

“So McConnell had the option to press the button, and he knew the button would help Trump, yet he didn’t press it. The only reasonable conclusion that can be drawn is that McConnell did not want to help Trump win.”

Trump recently blew up coronavirus negotiations with a demand for $2,000 checks, effectively echoing progressives and opposing McConnell’s $900 million package, which values them at just $600 each. Notably, writer Amanda Marcotte argued that the plan was part of an extortion scheme to push McConnell to help Trump overturn the election. Although Trump eventually signed the package, he claimed that he did so with a commitment that the Senate will consider legislation for $2,000 checks. Nevertheless, the upper chamber leader blocked the president’s demand on Tuesday, CBC reported.

According to Grim, Trump’s opposition to McConnell makes the purported calculation look more reasonable by the day. He noted that the 78-year-old politician has received almost everything he wanted from the president, including three Supreme Court justices, trillions of dollars in tax cuts, and control of the federal judiciary. Not only that, the writer opined that dealing with Trump is akin to dealing with a toddler that brings “daily humiliation.”

Grim noted that Trump’s departure next month will leave McConnell as the most powerful member of the Republican Parrty — as he was before the U.S. leader was elected to the White House.

The columnist argued that Trump cannot be trusted by McConnell or any of his allies. This further suggested that the head of the upper chamber has decided to cut his losses, echoing The Nation columnist Sasha Abramsky.

“It’s not hard to see why McConnell would rather grit his teeth through four more weeks of that, rather than four more years,” he concluded his piece.