Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump appear, at long last, to have set aside their grievances after meeting Thursday for the first time in years.
“We had a really positive meeting. He and I got a chance to talk a little bit, shook hands a few times,” McConnell told reporters afterward. “I can’t think of anything out of it to tell you that was negative.”
Trump’s meeting with congressional Republicans on Thursday was the first time he has returned to Capitol Hill since he incited an insurrection in 2021. Lawmakers spoke effusively about their nominee after the meeting, and NBC News reported that Republicans held an early 78th birthday celebration for Trump.
But Trump and McConnell’s cordiality is noteworthy, as the two men had not spoken since December 2020, when McConnell acknowledged that Joe Biden won the election. McConnell later blamed Trump for the Jan. 6 riot, calling him “practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day.” Since then, Trump has repeatedly criticized McConnell and hurled racist attacks against his wife, Elaine Chao.
Much of the Republican Party has already capitulated to Trump, so it’s unsurprising that McConnell finally joined the crowd. He endorsed Trump back in March, a move that my colleague Steve Benen pointed out was “inevitable.” And in May, after months of silence on Trump’s New York hush money trial, McConnell came to his defense after a jury convicted the former president of 34 felony counts of falsifying business documents.
“These charges never should have been brought in the first place,” McConnell wrote in a post on X. “I expect the conviction to be overturned on appeal.”
McConnell has never been Trump’s biggest fan. But whatever reservations the GOP leader has about his party’s presumptive presidential nominee, he has long been willing to set them aside in service of his own agenda — and he appears ready to do it again.
