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MCCONNELL, BIDEN, AND TRUMP. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell came to Fox News’ “Special Report” Thursday night ready to talk about the current President of the United States, Joe Biden. McConnell arrived equally determined not to talk about the former President of the United States, Donald Trump. But he ended up making Trump news anyway.
Earlier in the day, Biden had addressed critics who say his $1.9 trillion COVID-relief-and-much-more proposal is way too expensive. “Let me ask a rhetorical question — what would you have me cut?” Biden said. Maybe it was a rhetorical question for Biden — he doesn’t really want to hear an answer — but for McConnell it was real question. And on “Special Report,” McConnell had a real answer.
“First of all, the minimum wage doesn’t belong in there,” McConnell said. “The Congressional Budget Office says it would cost 1.4 million jobs we’d lose.” Indeed, not long after McConnell spoke, the Senate Parliamentarian made a long-awaited judgment that the minimum wage provision did not, in fact, belong in the COVID bill, and that Democrats will not be able to use the reconciliation maneuver to pass it with a simple majority vote. It’s unclear whether Democrats will try to muscle the measure through, anyway.
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“Second, $350 billion for bailouts to poorly-run states [is] clearly not necessary,” McConnell said. Indeed, analysts say much of that spending would have no connection to the COVID crisis. “Nearly half of the package will be spent on poorly targeted rebate checks and state and local government aid, including to households and governments that have experienced little or no financial loss during this crisis,” Maya MacGuineas, head of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, told Fox Business Network.
McConnell had more. “With regard to the school funding [Democrats] added, the school funding that we’ve already provided is not spent out in a bill we passed just a couple of months ago. But of the school funding that they add, only five percent of it is used this year. The rest of it is spent out in future years. I thought this was supposed to be a package about COVID relief.”
So to Biden’s “rhetorical” question — “What would you have me cut?” — McConnell and Republicans have some real, non-rhetorical answers. On Fox, McConnell said he expects all 50 Senate Republicans to be united against the bill. If that is the case, and if Biden and Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer can keep all 50 Democrats united in favor of the bill, then the vote will be 50-50, with Vice President Kamala Harris breaking the tie for Democrats. We’ll see.
McConnell had plenty to say about the bill, and about Biden himself. The new president, sometimes thought of as a “centrist” during his long time in the Senate, has turned sharply left, McConnell said. “It’s a very left-wing administration,” McConnell declared. “I want to say this about the president having chosen the progressive route — he’s certainly made it a lot easier for me to unify my members in opposition.”
McConnell had less to say when “Special Report” anchor Bret Baier brought up Trump. Baier noted that it was just 12 days ago that McConnell delivered a “blistering speech” about Trump on the Senate floor at the end of the former president’s second impeachment trial. What were McConnell’s thoughts now?
“What happened in the past is not something relevant now,” McConnell said. “We’re moving forward.” And that was the end of what McConnell had to say. Baier then mentioned that Trump had issued a scathing criticism of McConnell, accusing him of leading the Republican Party to defeat. McConnell said that in fact the GOP is doing well — “We’re very competitive” — and again avoided saying anything about Trump. When Baier asked whether McConnell blamed Trump for the party’s two Senate losses in Georgia, McConnell said, “I don’t have any further observations to make about that. We’re moving forward.” When Baier mentioned Trump’s plan to speak at CPAC this weekend, McConnell said, “I don’t have any advice to give the former president about where he should speak or what he should say.”
The message was clear: McConnell was not going to talk about Trump. No way, no how. But then Baier played Republican Sen. Mitt Romney’s remarks saying that Trump would win the 2024 Republican nomination if he ran. McConnell responded that he believes there will be a “wide-open race” for the nomination. “If the president [Trump] was the party’s nominee, would you support him?” Baier asked. “The nominee of the party?” McConnell said. “Absolutely.”
So after avoiding any comment about Trump, McConnell made some very big news: He would support Trump if Trump is the 2024 nominee. Within seconds, Democrats began circulating quotes from McConnell’s Senate speech and contrasted them with McConnell’s pledge to support Trump if nominated.
It is, indeed, a contrast. What is likely going on is that McConnell believes there is no way in the world Donald Trump will be the Republican Party’s presidential nominee in 2024. Trump will be 78 years old, his time in office, momentous as it was, will have receded into the past, and new Republican leaders will be vying for the nomination. While Republicans will still appreciate Trump’s achievements as president, life will move on. It always does.
Odds are, McConnell is right. But for now, the Senate GOP leader has created a lot of new questions to avoid.
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