Mitch McConnell calls Trump ‘nuts’ behind his back — and even compares him to Roy Moore: report
What Republicans say about President Donald Trump publicly and what they say in private can be two very different things — and according to The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer, a prime example is Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Publicly, the Kentucky Republican paints himself as a staunch Trump ally. But Mayer, in an in-depth article, reports that privately, McConnell has described the president as “nuts” and expressed frustration with some of Trump’s antics.
Mayer’s piece, headlined “How Mitch McConnell Became Trump’s Enabler in Chief,” takes a close look at McConnell’s history — both before and after Trump became president. And she stresses that McConnell, publicly, has been a vigorous Trump defender. But in private, the Senate majority leader has, at times, cringed.
“Although the two men almost always support each other in public,” Mayer reports, “several members of McConnell’s innermost circle told me that in private, things are quite different. They say that behind Trump’s back, McConnell has called the president ‘nuts’ and made clear that he considers himself smarter than Trump — and that he ‘can’t stand him.’”
Mayer adds that according to one of her sources, “McConnell said that Trump resembles a politician he loathes: Roy Moore, the demagogic former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court whose 2017 campaign for an open U.S. Senate seat was upended by allegations that he’d preyed on teen-age girls.”
In her piece, Mayer also notes what conservative Never Trump journalist Bill Kristol (co-founder of The Bulwark) has had to say about McConnell’s relationship with Trump.
“Bill Kristol, a formerly stalwart conservative who has become a leading Trump critic, describes McConnell as ‘a pretty conventional Republican who just decided to go along and get what he could out of Trump,’” Mayer explains. “Under McConnell’s leadership, the Senate — far from providing a check on the executive branch — has acted as an accelerant.”
