Mitch McConnell just made a devastating admission about Trump — and the GOP
By Greg Sargent
Mitch McConnell is getting a lot of attention this morning for his startlingly candid admission, in a new Bloomberg Politics podcast, that Donald Trump “doesn’t know a lot about the issues” and has not displayed the requisite “seriousness of purpose” for the presidency. And it certainly is clarifying to have the top Senate Republican admit this about the party’s standard bearer.
But McConnell’s quotes are actually more illuminating for what they tell us about today’s GOP, and about the true nature of the decision by many Republicans to support Trump in spite of his bigotry, pathologically abusive tendencies, and temperament that’s dangerously unfit for the job. Here’s what McConnell said:
“He needs someone highly experienced and very knowledgeable because it’s pretty obvious he doesn’t know a lot about the issues,” McConnell said. “You see that in the debates in which he’s participated. It’s why I have argued to him publicly and privately that he ought to use a script more often — there is nothing wrong with having prepared texts.”…
“For all of his obvious shortcomings, Donald Trump is certainly a different direction, and I think if he is in the White House he’ll have to respond to the right-of-center world which elected him, and the things that we believe in. So I’m comfortable supporting him,” McConnell said.
But his attacks on ethnic groups and fellow Republicans need to end, the lawmaker said. “I object to a whole series of things that he’s said — vehemently object to them. I think all of that needs to stop. Both the shots at people he defeated in the primary and these attacks on various ethnic groups in the country.”…
“I think he’d have a much better chance of winning if he would quit making so many unfortunate public utterances and stick to the script,” he said. McConnell said he delivered that message in person when the two were in the green room together at the recent National Rifle Association convention in Louisville.
“I said, ‘Hey Donald, you got a script?’ and he pulled it out of his pocket. He said, ‘You know I hate scripts, they’re so boring.’ And I said, ‘Put me down in favor of boring. You’ve demonstrated that you have a lot of Twitter followers and you’re good at turning on a big audience. Now you need to demonstrate you have the seriousness of purpose that is required to be president of the United States, and most candidates on frequent occasions use a script.’ So we’ll see whether that’s something he’s capable of doing.”
This is fascinating stuff on many levels. Note that McConnell “vehemently objects” to Trump’s attacks on various ethnic groups, but will continue to support him provided he reads from a prepared script that no longer includes such attacks — in other words, provided Trump stops saying these things aloud.
Remember, Republicans have known what Trump really believes for many months. He launched his campaign deriding Mexican immigrants as rapists and drug dealers, and rocketed to the top of the polls amid promises to ban Muslims from entry into the U.S. and flat out lies about the hordes of American Muslims supposedly celebrating 9/11. But now, two things have changed. Trump has secured the nomination, which has led many Republicans to endorse him as their standard bearer. At the same time, his bigotry and depravity are now receiving the searing level of media scrutiny that comes with a general election — even as the national electorate is now starting to tune in — both of which make those tendencies far more problematic for the GOP than they had previously been. McConnell hopes that Trump will mitigate this problem by refraining from saying this sort of thing in the future. But Trump’s bigotry and depravity cannot be put back in the bottle.
Also: McConnell admits there are legitimate doubts about whether Trump possesses the “seriousness of purpose” required for the presidency. Yet McConnell supported him, anyway. McConnell hopes that Trump can compensate for this deficit by reading from a “script,” which is quite an admission, albeit (perhaps) an inadvertent one.
Finally, McConnell gamely suggests that Trump will not go off the rails as president because he’ll “have to respond to the right-of-center world that elected him.” In other words, don’t worry, even if Trump is a dangerous sociopath, Republican lawmakers and voters will keep him in line. But by McConnell’s own admission, it remains to be seen whether Trump can demonstrate the requisite gravity for the job or even read from a damn script. If this is the case, why should anyone have faith that Trump will heed the “center right world” and remain within accepted norms as president? McConnell’s arguments are self-refuting.
Republicans have sought to deal with this basic problem by qualifying their support for Trump in various ways. Paul Ryan suggested at first he could not support Trump until he was persuaded that he will govern according to conservative principles, thus seeking to create the impression that his support is conditional. McConnell, in the Bloomberg podcast, suggested he could rescind his support at some point, which seems designed to do the same. But as Michael Gerson puts it, this will not do, given how serious a menace Trump is:
It is not a normal political moment. It is one of those rare times — like the repudiation of Joe McCarthy, or consideration of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, or the Watergate crisis — when the spotlight of history stops on a single decision, and a whole political career is remembered in a single pose. The test here: Can you support, for pragmatic reasons, a presidential candidate who purposely and consistently appeals to racism?
As Gerson concludes, if Republicans fail the test, “many of us will never be able to think about the Republican Party in quite the same way again.” I don’t really know whether the endorsement of Trump will taint GOP officials or the party in the long term. I also don’t think we should be treating Trump’s rise in a vacuum, as if GOP officials bear no complicity for creating the conditions for it. But ultimately, what is clear is that right now, this is an extraordinary moment for leading Republicans that cannot be managed with conventional rhetorical gamesmanship. McConnell has now demonstrated this quite clearly for all the world to see. His admissions should be seen as devastating — not just for Trump, but for the Republicans supporting him.
