'You are failing': Former GOP supporter of Mitch McConnell tears into the majority leader for helping Russia

When well-known former Republicans start goading Mitch McConnell with the moniker that clearly has him enraged, you know Moscow Mitch's cover is blown. For years he's been able to keep sliding under the radar, undermining the Senate, flouting the norms and traditions that kept the institution a functioning body, while the wider world paid little attention.

But that's changed. His enthusiastic enabling of this worst, most dangerous president is one thing that's breaking his protective shell. So is his refusal to protect the nation from enemy interference in our elections. But his disregard for human life is the last straw for a lot of people. That includes well-known former Republicans like David Weissman, who used to support McConnell, as well as Trump. In an open letter to Moscow Mitch published Wednesday in The Times of Israel, Weissman told him "if you don't like this nickname, do your job."

"You are failing the people that elected you to act as Senator, but instead you act as [a] Russian puppet," Weissman wrote. "You have also blocked bipartisan bills that would protect elections in our country. This gives Russia more opportunities to interfere in our elections." He writes to McConnell that he is "single-handedly putting our democracy at risk," and "This is why the people are calling you Moscow Mitch."

But it's the guns and the wanton destruction of human life that McConnell is ignoring that spurred Weissman, he told Newsweek; "there's been way too many mass shootings in our country and Mitch is the one that's stopping any prevention that can lower gun violence." McConnell's partnership with the NRA is too much for Weissman. "You take money from the NRA and Russia which is preventing you from making the right decisions to secure our Democracy and safety of the American people," Weissman wrote, concluding that "if you continue these acts, which I know you will, I will do all I can to help [McConnell Senate challenger] Amy McGrath to replace you in office."

So this is just one guy, who famously went from a MAGA radio pundit supporting Trump to a guy who publicly apologized to Hillary Clinton, but it's one Republican who's had the scales ripped from his eyes. He might be a prominent one, but he's definitely not the only one. Watching the unanswered and repeated mass slaughter of innocent lives will do that to a person. Unless that person is Moscow Mitch.