A new Morning Consult poll finds 42% of Republican voters hold favorable views about Sen. Mitch McConnell, up 12 points since a post-election low reached in late February. Meanwhile, the share of GOP voters with unfavorable views about McConnell fell 14 points, to 36%.
The improvement brings McConnell’s favorability rating roughly in line with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.
Member feature
Member feature
Member feature
Former Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) mocked Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) speech criticizing Democrats over President Trump’s impeachment to taking advice from serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer.
Said Franken: “Listening to Mitch McConnell talk about the decline of bipartisanship is like listening to Jeffrey Dahmer complain about the decline of dinner party etiquette.”
A man seen in a viral video refusing to shake Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) hand at the late Rep. Elijah Cummings’s (D-MD) funeral told the Washington Post the snub wasn’t based on his loyalty to Cummings.
Bobby Rankin said he blamed McConnell for denying veterans’ benefits to his brother before he died last year from cancer.
Said Raskin: “I could not put my hands in the man’s hand who refused to help somebody who served his country… I couldn’t do it, because I was thinking about my brother.”
American Bridge 21st century, a pro-Democrat super PAC, launched a Google Chrome browser extension that replaces “Mitch McConnell” With “Moscow Mitch” on web pages.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) called Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) “Moscow Mitch” while attacking him for blocking House Democrats’ legislation, including election security measures, The Hill reports.
Said Pelosi: “We all want to invest in building our democracy and saving it from any enemies, foreign and domestic We’ve sent our legislation to the Senate. Moscow Mitch says that he is the Grim Reaper. Imagine describing yourself as the Grim Reaper, that he’s going to bury all this legislation. Well, we have news for him. All this legislation is alive and well in the general public.”
“Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell suffered a fractured shoulder Sunday from a fall outside his home in Louisville, briefly hospitalizing the Kentucky Republican,” the Washington Post reports.
“A growing number of Democrats are calling on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to cancel the chamber’s August recess so that they can take up gun control legislation in the wake of two mass shootings this weekend,” NBC News reports.
“Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called on the Republican leader to end the chamber’s break to vote on a universal background check bill after the two shootings – one in Dayton, Ohio and another in El Paso, Texas – left at least 29 dead and 53 injured in a matter of just 13 hours. The Senate is currently in recess until September.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), under fire for blocking two election security bills, hit back on Monday comparing the attacks against him to “modern-day McCarthyism,” The Hill reports.
Said McConnell: “I was called unpatriotic, un-American and essentially treasonous by a couple of left-wing pundits on the basis of bold-faced lies. I was accused of aiding and abetting the very man I’ve singled out as an adversary and opposed for nearly 20 years, Vladimir Putin.”
He added: “These theatrical requests happen all the time here on the Senate. I promise that nobody involved, including my friend the Democratic Leader who made the request, actually thought he’d get a Republican Senate to instantly unanimously pass a bill that got one Republican vote over in the House It doesn’t make Republicans traitors or un-American. It makes us policymakers with a different opinion.”
In a nearly seven-minute harangue, Joe Scarborough dismissed the Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) as “Moscow Mitch” for what he deemed as “un-American” lack of action on election security, Mediaite reports.
The Morning Joe host then suggested that McConnell may be benefiting from a Russian oligarch’s investment in his home state: “I understand that there’s an oligarch that I have read is going to be setting up a big aluminum plant in Moscow Mitch’s home state.”
He added: “I don’t know if that’s it. But how can Moscow Mitch so willingly turn a blind eye not only this year to what his Republican chairman of the Intel committee is saying, to what Robert Mueller is saying what the FBI director is saying what the DNI is saying, to what the CIA is saying, to what the United States military Intel community is saying. How can Moscow Mitch keep denying that Vladimir Putin continues to try to subvert American democracy?”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said that Donald Trump is “on to something” with his inflammatory attacks against four congresswomen, Politico reports.
Said McConnell: “We’re in a big debate now and next year about what we want America to be like. Do we really think socialism applies here at a time of great prosperity, 50-year-low unemployment? That’s what the election I think is going to be about.”
He added: “Using, throwing around words like ‘racism,’ you know, kind of routinely applying it to almost everything. Let’s talk about the issues. And the issues are… where they want to take America. They want to take America into a socialist country.”
“From the president, to the speaker to freshmen members of the House, all of us have a responsibility to elevate the public discourse. Our words do matter. We all know politics is a combat sport, but it’s about time we lowered the temperature all across the board.”
— Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), quoted by McClatchy.
Member feature
“Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who said recently he opposes paying government reparations to the descendants of American slaves, has a family history deeply entwined in the issue: Two of his great-great-grandfathers were slave owners,” NBC News reports.
“The two great-great-grandfathers, James McConnell and Richard Daley, owned a total of at least 14 slaves in Limestone County, Alabama — all but two of them female, according to the county ‘Slave Schedules’ in the 1850 and 1860 censuses.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) told Laura Ingraham in an interview that he did not support giving statehood to the District of Columbia or Puerto Rico, the Washington Post reports.
Said McConnell: “They plan to make the District of Columbia a state — that would give them two new Democratic senators — Puerto Rico a state, that would give them two more new Democratic senators, and as a former Supreme Court clerk yourself, you’ve surely noticed that they plan to expand the Supreme Court.”
He added: “This is full-bore socialism on the march in the House. And yeah, as long as I’m the majority leader of the Senate, none of that stuff is going anywhere.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said that he does not support reparations for descendants of slaves, The Hill reports.
Said McConnell: “I don’t think reparations for something that happened 150 years ago for whom none us currently living are responsible is a good idea. We’ve tried to deal with our original sin of slavery by fighting a civil war, by passing landmark civil rights legislation. We elected an African American president.”
Taegan Goddard
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire -- which for more than two decades has been one of the nation's most influential political news sites.
More about Taegan Goddard →