Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) endorsed former President Donald Trump’s bid to return to the White House on Wednesday, getting behind his political foe as he locks up the Republican presidential nomination.
McConnell said it was “no surprise” that Trump will once again be the GOP nominee after he trounced former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley on Super Tuesday. His endorsement came hours after Haley, the last remaining challenger to Trump, dropped out of the presidential race.
“It is abundantly clear that former President Trump has earned the requisite support of Republican voters to be our nominee for President of the United States,” McConnell said in a statement. “It should come as no surprise that as nominee, he will have my support.”
For his part, Trump thanked McConnell for the endorsement in a post on his Truth Social platform.
“Thank you, Mitch,” the post read. “I look forward to working with you and a Republican Senate MAJORITY to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
While the minority leader has long said he would always back the eventual nominee of his party, McConnell, who is stepping down from his leadership role in November, had committed to not weighing in during the primary itself.
The endorsement was months in the making, the result of a behind-the-scenes effort led by longtime McConnell adviser Josh Holmes and Trump 2024 campaign manager Chris LaCivita. The two men have been holding private conversations since January about how to reunite their bosses following a difficult four years, two sources familiar with the matter told the Washington Examiner.
The top Senate Republican famously stopped taking Trump’s calls as he refused to give up his push to overturn the 2020 election results. Their relationship has been in disrepair ever since — despite McConnell refusing to support Democrats’ second impeachment effort against him after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
However, McConnell emphasized the common ground they found during Trump’s four years in the White House in his Wednesday statement.
“During his presidency, we worked together to accomplish great things for the American people including tax reform that supercharged our economy and a generational change of our federal judiciary — most importantly, the Supreme Court,” McConnell said. “I look forward to the opportunity of switching from playing defense against the terrible policies the Biden administration has pursued to a sustained offense geared towards making a real difference in improving the lives of the American people.”
McConnell began acknowledging the former president’s dominance over their party as Trump secured the endorsements of more than half of the Senate Republican Conference and continued to best Haley in state after state.
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Trump’s influence appeared to have some impact on McConnell, who described him in February to GOP colleagues as the party’s likely nominee whose viewpoints merited recognition. At the time, Senate Republicans were sparring over whether to abandon a bipartisan border security deal that was viewed as critical to passing a larger package that includes aid to Ukraine and Israel.
Trump opposed the border deal and the overall bill and has argued that Republicans should not act on anything that could benefit President Joe Biden in November.
