Donald Trump Wants Republicans To Lose Georgia Senate Runoffs To Spite Mitch McConnell, Democrat Says
President Donald Trump wants the Republican candidates to lose the upcoming U.S. Senate runoff races in Georgia just to spite Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, a Democrat claims.
Trump has been publicly at odds with McConnell for the past week, ever since the president’s surprise announcement that he did not support the bipartisan coronavirus stimulus and wanted the $600 direct payments to Americans to be $2,000 instead. McConnell had reportedly fought against including stimulus payments, and the announcement led top Democrats to support his demand and put pressure on McConnell.
Many pundits believed that the demand also placed the Georgia Republicans in a difficult spot, as McConnell remained opposed to making the direct payments larger and both he and the GOP took the brunt of the blame. The races will decide the makeup of the next Senate, as Democrats could move into a 50-50 tie with the GOP caucus if they are able to win both contests. That would allow incoming Vice President Kamala Harris to cast tie-breaking votes.
Trump appeared to increase pressure on the races on New Year’s Day, when he called the elections “both illegal and invalid,” claiming that the state legislature acted illegally in passing a consent decree in March that allowed voters to fix mail-in ballots with alleged mismatches between the signature on ballots and those on file with election officials. As The Hill noted, the claim appeared to be part of his ongoing insistence that he really won the 2020 presidential election but had it stolen from him through nationwide fraud.
The report noted that the allegation complicated the race, even as Trump had worked to boost turnout among Republicans. Katie Hill, a former Democratic congresswoman from California, believes that was his intention.
“At this point I think Trump wants Republicans to lose Georgia just to spite McConnell, and I’m totally fine with that,” Hill tweeted.
There have been a number of reports suggesting growing tension between the two GOP leaders. As The Inquisitr reported, progressive commentator Sam Seder said he believed that the president’s call for larger checks was an attempt to take control away from McConnell.
“Some people say that by calling for bigger checks and refusing to sign McConnells subpar stimulus Trump is signaling to GA Republican voters ‘dont give McConnell the Senate,'” he tweeted.
McConnell publicly broke from Trump last month, acknowledging that Biden had won the race and publicly offering his congratulations. Trump has continued to insist that he was the real winner and that the victory was stolen from him through massive fraud.
