Former Republican strategist Steve Schmidt, who recently renounced his Republican affiliation and left the party, pulled no punches when it comes to Mitch McConnell. Schmidt noted the Senate Majority Leader has been “up to his eyeballs” in this entire Russian affair and makes the case that it is time for Republican senators to remove Mitch McConnell from power and elect a new Senate Majority Leader who will right the ship.
Even as former Senator Harry Reid and Democrats were trying to sound the alarm about Russia’s cyberattacks and propaganda campaigns in the summer of 2016, Mitch McConnell refused President Obama’s calls for a bipartisan statement alerting the public. From an NBC News interview with President Obama’s former White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough:
“The president asked the four leaders in a bipartisan meeting in the Oval Office to join him in asking the states to work with us on this question,” McDonough said. “It took over three weeks to get that statement worked out. It was dramatically watered down."
Asked if it was watered down at the insistence of McConnell and only McConnell, McDonough responded, “yes.”
Former Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid had Mitch McConnell and Republicans absolutely nailed when he gave this speech on the floor of the United States Senate in June 2016. He implored them to stop enabling Trump’s racism and vile rhetoric. Two years later the problem is worse than we ever could have imagined.
Senator McConnell and congressional Republican leaders have never taken a stand against Trump’s vile rhetoric. That’s because the hate emanating from Trump’s mouth reflects the Republican Party’s agenda here in the United States Senate for the past seven and a half years. The agenda that Senator McConnell himself promoted.
For years, Senator McConnell and other Republican leaders embraced the darkest elements within their party. The Republican Party made anti-woman, anti-Latino, anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, and anti-Obama policies the norm. Trump is the logical conclusion of what Republican leaders have been saying and doing for seven and a half years.
By refusing to denounce Trump’s attack on a federal judge for the racism it clearly connotes, it shows Senator McConnell is the poster boy for Republicans’ spinelessness that allowed Donald Trump to be the Republican nominee for president of the United States.
Here is video of that June 2016 speech by Harry Reid. He was right then and Schmidt is right now: Mitch McConnell has got to go. This country cannot move forward as long as he is in power.