Trump demands GOP get rid of McConnell as their Senate leader, calls him a ‘pawn for the Dems
Donald Trump demanded that Republicans replace Mitch McConnell as their Senate leader in a brutal statement where he attacked the Kentucky senator and his wife, former Transportation secretary Elaine Chao.
The former president accused McConnell of being a ‘pawn’ for Democrats and said his inaction is causing moves in Congress ‘our Country can never recover from’.
He also claimed that McConnell and Chao, who is Chinese, got ‘rich’ off of decades of business with China and said a new Republican Senate leader should be chosen.
Most predictions point to Republicans taking back a majority in Congress in the 2022 midterms, but Trump says McConnell shouldn’t be the one to continue leading the party in the upper chamber.
‘Mitch McConnell is not an Opposition Leader, he is a pawn for the Democrats to get whatever they want,’ the former president wrote in a Wednesday statement. ‘He is afraid of them, and will not do what has to be done.’
‘A new Republican Leader in the Senate should be picked immediately!’
Last week, McConnell warned Republicans could risk not winning back a Senate majority due to ‘candidate quality’ among its nominees – a direct blow to Trump as endorsements have become his biggest source of power post-presidency.
Donald Trump (left) said Republicans need to ‘immediate’ remove Mitch McConnell (right) as their leader in the Senate because he is a ‘pawn’ for Democrats. The two are pictured together at the Capitol on January 9, 2019
Chao, who was Trump’s Transportation secretary for almost the entirety of his single term, has family ties to China through a maritime shipping company, Foremost Group, which largely operates in China.
While the Chao family ties to China have been known for years, Trump has only brought up the issue after Chao resigned from his administration in the days following the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot.
‘The Democrats have Mitch McConnell and his lovely wife, Elaine ‘Coco’ Chao, over a barrel,’ Trump said in a statement and Truth Social post on Wednesday.
Linking to a story from conservative publication The Federalist, Trump noted in his statement that McConnell and Chao will ‘never be prosecuted.’
‘[A]s long as he continues to give the Radical Left the Trillions and Trillions of Dollars that they constantly DEMAND,’ he added.
Chao, although not part of the official establishment, still has power in Washington in her capacity as a board member for the Smithsonian’s Asian Pacific American Center.
As the highest-ranking Republican in the Senate, the publication claims, McConnell ‘will likely determine the steps Congress takes to keep communist China’s hands out of the U.S. government.’
Trump says if McConnell doesn’t push to use the ‘debt ceiling card’ to stop expensive spending, including on the Green New Deal, the country will plunge into a depression.
‘These expenditures are something our Country can never recover from,’ Trump said in his Wednesday statement from his Save America PAC.
McConnell has upped his criticism of Trump, but has still maintained that he would support a Trump presidential run in 2024.
