Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell urged people to reelect President Trump and to keep Republicans in power in the Senate so they could put the brakes on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s agenda.
“I’m immensely proud of the work the Republican Senate has done. We are the firewall against Nancy Pelosi’s agenda,” the Kentucky senator said Thursday. “Like President Trump, we won’t be bullied by a liberal media intent on destroying America’s institutions.”
Republicans hold a three-seat advantage in the Senate. Although McConnell closed his convention remarks advocating Trump’s reelection, the bulk of his comments were focused on Senate Republicans. The Senate GOP is on offense in Alabama and Michigan but is playing defense in Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Iowa, Montana, and North Carolina.
“We will stand our post on behalf of the millions of Americans whose stories aren’t told in today’s newspapers,” McConnell said. “We will continue to support American families as we defeat the coronavirus and return our economy to the envy of the world. The stakes have never been higher, which is why I’m asking you to support Republican Senate candidates across the country and reelect my friend, President Donald Trump.”
McConnell is up for reelection this fall but should win by a comfortable margin, despite a spirited challenge from Democrat Amy McGrath, a Marine Corps veteran who has raised tens of millions of dollars for her campaign from grassroots liberals. Kentucky is deep red territory, having voted for Trump in 2016 by just under 30 percentage points. Shooting for a seventh term, the 78-year-old McConnell is the longest-serving Republican leader in the Senate in history, having been in the post since late 2006.
Since Trump assumed office, McConnell has helped the president fill the federal judiciary with conservative jurists. That record of appointments includes two Supreme Court justices and more than 200 seats on district courts and courts of appeal.
Although sometimes derided by conservative activists as insufficiently aggressive, McConnell played a crucial role in Trump’s 2016 victory when he blocked Barack Obama’s nominee to fill a Supreme Court seat that had opened when conservative Justice Antonin Scalia died. He refused even to let Merrick Garland receive a hearing in the Judiciary Committee, much less a floor vote. Trump vowed to pick a stalwart conservative to replace Scalia, a move that helped him win crucial votes from Republican voters skeptical that the flamboyant former Democrat could be trusted with the courts.
McConnell is married to Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao.
