Andrew McCarthy of National Review Online analyzes the retiring Senate Republican leader’s latest statement about former President Donald Trump.
There is a lot going on right now in the lives of Mitch McConnell and his wife of 30 years, Elaine Chao.One of the most consequential figures in the storied history of the United States Senate, McConnell, who is 82, just announced that he is stepping down at year’s end from the GOP helm, which he has held since 2007, after a number of bad falls (one which kept him away from the Senate for six weeks) and concerns about his health became painfully public.
Chao, who is 70, is a historic figure in her own right: the first Asian-American woman to hold a cabinet post — she was labor secretary in the Bush 43 administration and transportation secretary in the Trump administration. She is now living with heartbreak: Last month, Chao’s younger sister Angela, 50, was found dead in her car after it was pulled from the pond in which it had been submerged in Johnson City, Texas (near Austin). …
… I can’t help but find it bizarre, though, that in the midst of all this, Senator McConnell chooses this moment to endorse former President Donald Trump. Sure, Trump has all but formally sewn up the 2024 Republican presidential nomination after yesterday’s Super Tuesday primary wins. And as the party establishment’s leader, McConnell perceives the need to back the party’s certain nominee. But to rationalize an endorsement, McConnell has to flush his bristling condemnation that portrayed Trump as unfit for the presidency, as well as Trump’s demeaning of McConnell’s wife. …
… “American citizens attacked their own government. They used terrorism to try to stop a specific piece of democratic business they did not like. Fellow Americans beat and bloodied our own police. They stormed the Senate floor. They tried to hunt down the Speaker of the House. They built a gallows and chanted about murdering the vice president.”
“They did this because they had been fed wild falsehoods by the most powerful man on Earth — because he was angry he’d lost an election.”
“Former President Trump’s actions preceding the riot were a disgraceful dereliction of duty.”
