Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid is blasting his colleague Mitch McConnell for having “led the charge” for Donald Trump, despite the Kentucky senator’s previous criticism of his party’s presumptive presidential nominee.
“The Senate leadership is enthralled by Trump. ‘He’s the guy. He’s going to carry on the standards of the Republican Party.’ Wow,” Reid said in a recent interview with Politico.
“My job is to tell people that Mitch McConnell is one of the reasons we have Trump,” he added. “Everything that Trump is, McConnell led the charge.”
According to the Nevada senator, who plans to retire from the Senate following the November elections, McConnell and Trump are “cuddled up together,” now that the Senate majority leader has chosen to back the de facto GOP nominee.
McConnell recently warmed to Trump, after months of criticizing the billionaire’s proposals and previously suggesting GOP Senate candidates would “drop him like a hot rock” if he secured the nomination. The two met last month in a closed-door meeting with a handful of other senators as part of Trump’s efforts to unify the GOP.
“Trump is not going to change the institution, he’s not going to change the basic philosophy of the party,” the Kentucky Republican told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt earlier this week, adding that he’s “comfortable voting for [Trump] because on the big things that I think have the greatest impact on the future of the country. At the top of the list is Supreme Court. I think he’ll be just fine.”
Reid claimed McConnell and other Senate Republicans now face the dilemma of having to defend some of Trump’s most controversial comments and policy proposals during the general election — which he reportedly plans to help make them do.
But even if Democrats chose to channel a positive message in the general election and refrain from leveling insults at Trump similar to how he’s attacked them, the Nevada senator predicted the billionaire would still lose the White House.
“I don’t think he can win. I would feel sad for my family [and] the country,” Reid said. “That’s a hypothetical, a nightmare I can’t accept. As much as I disliked George Bush the second, I would never have a nightmare about it.”
