McConnell calls Trump ‘diminished’, criticizes him for making Republicans look ‘pretty mean’

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Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., took a swipe at former President Trump in a new interview, calling him “diminished” and deserving of blame for the party’s disappointing performance mid-term.

McConnell told NBC News that Trump’s candidates in the midterm elections have contributed to the idea that the GOP is “somehow mean and tends toward chaos.”

McConnell and Trump have been at odds repeatedly throughout the former presidents’ political careers, with tensions boiling over since Democrats defied predictions and won a US Senate seat in November, denying the GOP a return to a majority . Trump-backed Senate candidates like Herschel Walker in Georgia and Blake Masters in Arizona have lost races that Republicans saw as solid pick-up opportunities.

Tensions between former President Trump and Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., continue to rise after Republicans failed to win a Senate majority in November. (SAUL LOEB, MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)

The two Republican Party leaders blamed the other for the poor performance, with the NBC News interview revealing the latest digs against Trump from the McConnell camp.

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“In a rare and pointed critique of the former president, who is looking to return in two years, McConnell said Trump’s power was waning and asked him to forfeit the Senate primaries,” NBC News reported.

McConnell told the outlet, “Here’s what I think has changed: I think the political influence of past presidents has diminished.”

McConnell may have pointed to a recent poll indicating that Republican voters are seriously eyeing Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in 2024, despite Trump having already launched his re-election campaign last month.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican from Kentucky, leaves a news conference following the weekly Republican Caucus Luncheon at the United States Capitol in Washington, DC, U.S., Wednesday, Sept. 28, 2022. Photographer : Samuel Corum/Bloomberg via Getty Images (Bloomberg)

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In the interview, the GOP leader added that because of Trump’s political decline, he and his Senate Leadership Fund super PAC allies are “less inclined to accept any cards that might be handed to us.”

“We can do a better job with less potential interference. The former president may have other things to do,” he said, suggesting that Trump should not meddle in the primaries.

McConnell also claimed that Trump tarnished the parties’ image for midterms, implying that because of him, Republican candidates underperformed. In swing states like Arizona and Georgia, McConnell told NBC News that GOP underperformance with persuasive moderates was “fatal.”

“We lost the support we needed among independents and moderate Republicans, mainly because of the opinion they had of us as a party largely made by the former president that we were somehow evil and tend to chaos,” he said.

Former President Donald Trump announces he is running for president for the third time at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla. on Nov. 15, 2022. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)

He added, “And oddly enough, even though this subset of voters didn’t approve of President Biden, they repeatedly didn’t trust us enough to give us the majority we needed.”

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The lawmaker also explained why he hasn’t intervened in more primaries to bring GOP candidates to safety. He said: “In the other states, Trump’s support was so great that we could have spent a lot of money, maybe trying to come up with a different candidate and maybe not succeeding. And so my conclusion was that everywhere else we had to play with the cards that were dealt.”

McConnell claimed he “looked at the landscape” and “believed he only had two chances to pick favorites against flawed candidates: in Missouri, to defeat scandal-ridden Eric Greitens, and in Alabama, to arrest far-right representative Mo Brooks”. NBC’s Sahil Kapur wrote.

Gabriel Hays is associate editor of Fox News Digital.

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