US Senate leader glues self to president
WASHINGTON (AP) — It is not quite “Trump-McConnell 2020,” but it might as well be.
As he runs for re-election, United States Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is positioning himself as the president’s wingman, his trusted right hand in Congress, transformed from a behind-thescenes player into a prominent – if sometimes reviled – Republican like none other besides Donald Trump himself.
“In Washington, President Trump and I are making America great again!” he declared at a rally in Kentucky, his voice rising over protesters.
Other than Democrat Nancy Pelosi, and more recently, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, no current politician has so quickly become such a highprofile object of partisan scorn. McConnell was heckled last weekend at his home state’s annual “Fancy Farm” political picnic, and protesters outside his Louisville house hurled so many profanities that Twitter temporarily shut down his account for posting video of them online.
Undaunted, he revels in the nickname he’s given himself – the “Grim Reaper,” bragging that he is burying the House Democrats’ agenda – though he seems stung by one lobbed by opponents, “Moscow Mitch.”
The Democrats’ agenda, however, includes gun legislation to require background checks that Trump now wants to consider, forcing McConnell to adjust his earlier refusal to do so. The Senate leader has been here before, pushing ahead with a Trump priority that is unpopular with most Republicans. This will test both his relationship with the president and his grip on the GOP majority.
All while he is campaigning to keep his job.
McConnell is even more dependent on Trump’s popularity in Kentucky than on his own, a different political landscape from the one he faced in 2014, before the president took the White House.
“They need each other,” Scott Jennings, a longtime adviser to McConnell, said.
The new McConnell strategy shows just how far Trump has transformed the GOP, turning a banker’s-collar-and-cufflinks conservative into a “Fake News!” shouting senator.
Theirs was not an easy alliance in Trump’s first year, and they went a long stretch without talking to each other. Two years on, McConnell has proven a loyal implementer of the president’s initiatives, and Trump no longer assails the senator on Twitter.
Perhaps no issue has drawn the unlikely partners together more than the current reckoning over national gun violence. Republicans, long allied with the National Rifle Association, have resisted stricter laws on firearm and ammunition sales. The frequency of mass shootings and the grave toll, however, are intensifying pressure to act.