Former President Donald Trump lashed out at Sen. Mitch McConnell on Thursday over his “refusal” to approve payments to Americans above $600 during coronavirus spending negotiations last year, blaming the now-Senate minority leader for two GOP losses in Georgia that handed Democrats the majority.
“To set the record straight, there were two reasons the Senate races were lost in Georgia,” Trump said in a statement issued Thursday, pointing to “McConnell’s refusal to go above $600 per person on the stimulus check payments when the two Democrat opponents were touting $2,000 per person in ad after ad.”
“This latter point was used against our [GOP] senators and the $2,000 will be approved anyway by the Democrats who bought the Georgia election — and McConnell let them do it!” Trump added.
GEORGIA REPUBLICANS NERVOUSLY POINT FINGERS AT TRUMP AS GEORGIA RUNOFF RETURNS TRICKLE IN
Democrats campaigned heavily on a promise to deliver $2,000 stimulus checks if they secured both Senate seats, giving the party control of the chamber with the addition of Vice President Kamala Harris’s tiebreaking vote.
One week before their Jan. 6 runoffs, then-Georgia Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, both Republicans, backed Trump’s push to increase coronavirus payments to $2,000, a position that was at odds with most of the party — McConnell included.
Congress approved $600 checks despite Trump’s demands, and Democrats are now working to pass a $1.9 trillion package that includes $1,400 payments, extended unemployment benefits, and aid for vaccine distribution and schools.
Though Trump visited Georgia several times in the lead-up to the runoffs, he was criticized for touting his election fraud claims, which some believed could suppress voter turnout.
Three days before Election Day, an hourlong telephone call between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger leaked in which the then-president asked Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes” to overturn the Georgia presidential race in his favor, lending ammunition to his critics.
In his statement, the former president seemed to try to refute this, charging instead that Georgia’s Republican leadership dampened GOP turnout after failing to “stand up to Stacey Abrams” and crack down on voting irregularities.
He also accused the National Republican Senatorial Committee of launching “ineffective” television advertising in Georgia, featuring McConnell, and credited his own endorsement for McConnell’s reelection win, claiming that the GOP leader “would have lost badly without this.”
The former president made similar remarks at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Florida, on Sunday, prompting McConnell to quip that he wanted “to thank [Trump] for the 15-point margin I had in 2014, as well.”
McConnell and Trump have been locked in a war of words since the minority leader suggested the former president should face criminal charges for his role in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, even after voting to acquit Trump.
The two have jockeyed for influence within and control over the Republican Party.
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In the weeks after the Nov. 3 election, Trump raised more than $30 million through his leadership committee, urging his supporters in fundraising texts and emails to help the party hold the line in Georgia and contest the presidential results.
Federal filings through the end of the year reviewed last month by the Washington Examiner showed his new group spent nothing toward those goals.
