Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell indicated he agrees with President Trump’s assertion that progressive Democrats are determined to destroy the country and implement a socialist agenda.
“You don’t have to have a military coup to have a socialist country,” McConnell warned Thursday morning during an appearance on Fox Business Network. “You know, they’re giving away free this, free that … who do you think is going to pay for that? All the rest of the productive parts of society. So the president is on to something here.”
McConnell was commenting on Trump’s blistering attack on four freshman minority members of Congress during a campaign rally the night before, which he dubbed the “dangerous, militant hard Left.”
The four lawmakers, Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, have all advocated for liberal policies on healthcare, tax law, and immigration.
They have attacked Trump and other leading Republicans personally, saying their policies are inequitable and racist.
Ocasio-Cortez describes herself as a Democratic socialist.
“Well, look [Trump] is right about the — the squad wanting to go turn us into a socialist country,” McConnell said.
Trump sparked intense backlash after he tweeted this week that the four women, who are all U.S. citizens, should “go back” to the countries they came from and “leave” if “they don’t like it” in America.
At the mere mention of Omar’s name during Trump’s rally in North Carolina, the crowd exploded in a chant of “Send her back!”
“I think it’s time to lower the rhetoric related to that all across America,” McConnell said, attempting to redirect the conversation to policy issues rather than racial division. “We have to make the argument, you know that is what a campaign is about. We have to make the argument. And if we can’t successfully make the case against that kind of stuff, ought to go into another line of work.”
