As House speaker Paul Ryan tries to weather a Trump imbroglio, his GOP counterpart, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, remains silent on the election.
The Kentucky Republican endorsed Trump after the candidate clinched the presidential nomination in May, and has occasionally commented on some of his highest-profile missteps: the Judge Alfonso Curiel and Capt. Khizr Kahn controversies, for example. But now that McConnell is home for the Senate recess—and the election has turned to Trump’s personal transgressions and his beef with the media and the electoral system—the typically calculating lawmaker has turned away questions about the race for the White House. From the Associated Press:
And that doesn’t include Tuesday, when McConnell appeared in the northwestern Kentucky river-town of Owensboro for a local business’s ribbon cutting. “McConnell declined to comment on the presidential election,” a reporter for WEHT-WTVW said.
Unlike Ryan, McConnell’s majority is in serious danger. Many of his top incumbents up for reelection in swing states have had to uncomfortably grapple with the Trump phenomenon, like New Hampshire’s Kelly Ayotte, who withdrew her endorsement of Trump this month, and Marco Rubio, who has walked a sinuous line in sticking with the presidential hopeful. Trump currently trails in both states and has a highly negative public image—the same case in Pennsylvania (which features Pat Toomey’s reelection bid), Wisconsin (Ron Johnson), and Nevada (Joe Heck).
Read more from the AP here.
