Mitch McConnell Defends Past Comments Calling Trump ‘Despicable’ By Throwing JD Vance and Lindsey Graham Under the Bus
AP Photo/Timothy D. Easley, File
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) defended his past criticism — and current support — of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump by throwing Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Trump’s running mate, Senator JD Vance (R-OH), under the bus in a new statement.
According to newly released excerpts from the soon-t0-be published McConnell biography, The Price of Power by Michael Tackett, McConnell had harsh words for Trump after the 2020 election. After it became clear that Trump had lost his reelection bid, McConnell privately mused that “it’s not just the Democrats who are counting the days” until Trump left office and that his sore loser syndrome “only underscores the good judgment of the American people. They’ve had just enough of the misrepresentations, the outright lies almost on a daily basis, and they fired him.”
“And for a narcissist like him, that’s been really hard to take, and so his behavior since the election has been even worse, by far, than it was before, because he has no filter now at all,” he continued.
McConnell also referred to Trump as being “stupid as well as being ill-tempered” and a “despicable human being.”
The longtime Republican leader has, however, endorsed Trump’s 2024 campaign to retake the White House. In a statement to the Associated Press, he reconciled his positions by citing Graham and Vance.
“Whatever I may have said about President Trump pales in comparison to what JD Vance, Lindsey Graham, and others have said about him, but we are all on the same team now,” said McConnell.
Both Vance and Graham have evolved from harsh critics to outspoken supporters of Trump over the years. In 2015, Graham called Trump “a race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot” who didn’t have “a clue about anything.”
“You know how you make America great again? Tell Donald Trump to go to hell,” he mused at the time.
Vance, meanwhile, compared Trump to Adolf Hitler, liked tweets accusing Trump of “serial sexual assault,” and referred to him as “reprehensible” and an “idiot.”
Both Graham and Vance endorsed Trump during the 2024 Republican presidential primary, while McConnell only did so after Trump had become the presumptive nominee.
