Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other top Republicans met with Donald Trump today to try to hash out just how they're going to pass a tax plan that raises taxes on millions of Americans to pay for a tax cut to billionaires. Democratic leaders were originally scheduled to attend as well, but after Trump tweeted a string of insults about those Democrats, claiming they want "illegal immigrants flooding into our Country unchecked, are weak on Crime and want to substantially RAISE Taxes," leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer told Trump they wouldn't bother attending.
This simple show of spine toward a belligerent, incompetent, shouting manchild would seem a straightforward act to take when someone is tweeting insults at you. Mitch McConnell and the other Republicans, though, immediately moved to instead kiss the garbage fire's ass.
“It never occurred to me that I could just say to President Obama that I'm not showing up."
As is typical for him, Mitch McConnell is lying. Republican leaders repeatedly snubbed Obama by "not showing up." Here, have an example.
We will chalk this up to McConnell's complete, Jeff-Sessions-like ability to forget anything he ever did before approximately last Tuesday, a character trait that shows up in Mitch's floor speeches on a regular basis. Mitch would never write gargantuan pieces of legislation while refusing to even let the other party in the negotiation room. Mitch would never block judicial or administrative appointments in fits of partisan pique. Mitch would never hold a Supreme Court seat hostage under the pretense that the Constitution has a secret this-only-counts-for-three-years-of-every-four clause.
What we do know is that Mitch would never, ever, show a spine if a clearly incompetent, ignorant, buffoonish, quite possibly mentally imbalanced blowhard of a "president" repeatedly insulted him. We want our leaders to, at the very least, react negatively when the garbage fire sends out sparks in their direction. Let the blowhard in chief have two scoops of ice cream with his meals, but when he starts attacking other Americans with froth and lies and general derangement, our leaders should stand the hell up already.
McConnell also accused Democrats of having a "lack of seriousness" about funding the government. He said this in support of a Republican plan to massively rework our tax and healthcare (again) systems to funnel cash to the rich at the expense of taxpayers and our national debt. Among Mitch McConnell's other faults, he seems to have an only rudimentary understanding of what words mean.
"It’s a challenging exercise. Think of sitting there with a Rubik's Cube trying to get to 50."
That is not how a Rubix's Cube works, Mitch. That is not how any of this works. But never mind.