McConnell calls Trump ‘diminished’, vows not to bend to his 2024 candidates

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Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell deferred to former President Donald Trump’s handpicked candidates in the competitive midterm race, which ended in a landslide defeat and a largerDemocraticmajority that bucked the odds.

He vows not to let that happen again, insisting he will “actively seek quality candidates” to promote in the 2024 primaries.

In a rare and pointed criticism of the former president, who is seeking a two-year comeback, McConnell said Trump’s power was waning and called on him to back off the Senate primaries.

“Here’s what I think has changed: I think the political power of the former president has diminished,” McConnell told NBC News on Wednesday in a wide-ranging interview in his office on Capitol Hill.

The diminished status has made McConnell and by extension his allies, like the deep-pocketed Senate Leadership Fund super PAC “less inclined to accept the cards that can be dealt to us,” he said.

“We can do a better job with less potential interference,” he said. “The former president may have other things to do.”

McConnell also blamed Trump for damaging the party’s image among critical independents and swing voters, rejecting GOP Senate contenders in majority-decided states. He said the party underperformed in “every state” including the red state of Ohio, which Republicans narrowly won and its performance was “lethal” in Arizona, New Hampshire and Georgia.

“We lost the support we needed among independents and moderate Republicans, mainly related to their perception of us as a party that was largely made by the former president that we were kind of rude and prone to trouble,” said said McConnell. “And oddly enough, even though that subset of voters disapproved of President Biden, they didn’t trust us enough in some cases to give us the majority we needed.”

McConnell’s sharp criticism heightened tensions between the two GOP leaders ahead of a potentially tumultuous two years for the party, which faces deep divisions over governance and political strategy as it prepares to take control of the House and looking forward to 2024.

A spokesman for Trump did not respond to a request for comment.

McConnell defended his decision not to intervene in most Senate primaries in 2022. He said he “looked at the landscape” and believed he had only two chances to pick favorites against flawed candidates: in Missouri, to defeat scandal-plagued Eric Greitens, and in Alabama, to stop far-right Rep. Mo Brooks.

“In other states, Trump’s support is so important that we can spend a lot of money, maybe trying to have another candidate and maybe not succeed,” he said. “And so my conclusion is that everywhere, we have to play the cards that have been dealt.”

McConnell seeks to turn the page on a disastrous Senate cycle for the GOP and take advantage of various pickup opportunities to win the majority in 2024. Democrats are defending three seats in red states and five more in closely divided states. Their best hope of flipping seats is in Republican-leaning Florida and Texas. However, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, DN.Y. not McConnell showing confidence about winning a majority in 2024.

McConnell is locked in a bitter feud with a vindictive Trump after criticizing his actions on January 6, 2021 and the relationship presents land mines for the GOP in 2024, especially if Trump is the nominee this. McConnell acknowledges the land mines he will not endorse in the presidential primary. He suggested Trump would never win the nomination again, but left the door open to support him in the general election if he did.

He also spent much of 2022 fighting over strategy with Sen. Florida’s Rick Scott, the GOP’s Senate campaign leader. Scott rejected McConnell’s view that Trump is the problem he says Republicans have lost because they have failed to offer an agenda that inspires voters. Scott even mounted a rare challenge to McConnell for the top caucus job and lost.

However, McConnell has his own role in the GOP’s poor performance this year. Using aggressive parliamentary tactics, he probably played a bigger role than anyone else in building the 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court, which sparked an uprising among abortion rights supporters when it overturned Roe v . Wadein Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization in June.

Asked repeatedly about the role of the Dobbs decision in GOP failures, McConnell was unrepentant.

He acknowledged that the ruling “has generated enthusiasm among Democrats, not surprisingly,” in the midterm elections. But he said the GOP’s turnout was “fine” and argued that abortion is not why key independents and swing voters support Democrats.

“Some of their base may have been ginned up,” McConnell said. But he insisted: “Our biggest problem is the quality of the candidate.”

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