"There simply is no more loathsome creature walking the political landscape"

 

“There simply is no more loathsome creature walking the political landscape than the Majority Leader of the United States Senate. You have to go back to McCarthy or McCarran to find a Senate leader who did so much damage to democratic norms and principles than this yokel from Kentucky. Mitch McConnell is a career politician who knows full well what he's doing to democratic government and is doing it anyway because it gives him power, and it gives the rest of us a wingnut federal judiciary for the next 30 years... 
 
“He doesn't have the essential patriotism god gave a snail. He pledges allegiance to his donors, and they get what they want. He's selling out his country, and he's doing it in real-time and out in the open. This is worse than McCarthy or McCarran ever were. Mitch McConnell is the thief of the nation's soul” (Esquire, There Is No More Loathsome Creature Walking Our Political Landscape Than Mitch McConnell Yes, that includes the jumped-up real-estate crook in the White House by Charles P. Pierce).

"The cold-blooded, most corporate-indentured Republicans dominate our political process today. Mitch McConnell led by the election-buying Koch brothers, drove Kavanaugh’s nomination through the Senate and excluding important witnesses who wished to testify. McConnell and the Senate prevented Trump from being convicted under the impeachment clause of the Constitution [on December 18, 2019; now look where we are today because of it!] -Ralph Nader.
 

“‘We have no choice but to take it up,’ McConnell said of impeachment. ‘But we'll be working through this process hopefully in a fairly short period of time in total coordination with the White House counsel's office and the people who are representing the president.’ Democratic lawmakers viewed McConnell's comments as unsurprising confirmation that the GOP-controlled Senate has no plans to allow an objective impeachment trial…” (Common Dreams).
 

“Senators Mitch McConnell, Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham received donations from rich Russian oligarchs: In 2017, donated $1 million to McConnell's Senate Leadership Fund.  ‘McConnell surely knew as a participant in high level intelligence briefings in 2016 that our electoral process was under attack by the Russians. Two weeks after the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a joint statement in October 2016 that the Russian government had directed the effort to interfere in our electoral process, McConnell's PAC accepted a $1 million donation from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings. The PAC took another $1 million from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings on March 30, 2017, just 10 days after former FBI Director James Comey publicly testified before the House Intelligence Committee about Russia's interference in the election” (Dallas Morning News).
 
 
“Donald Trump helped provoke the swarms of his supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday, January 19… ‘The mob was fed lies,’ McConnell told the chamber, which two weeks earlier had been evacuated as rioters invaded the building. ‘They were provoked by the president and other powerful people’” (CNBC).
 

“[The notion that] Trump cannot be tried since he’s out of office attracted 45 of the 50 Republican senators, including Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), the Senate Republican leader. Rand Paul’s gambit confirmed Trump will not be convicted, despite the horrific events of Jan. 6 (and others leading up to them) in which Trump obviously played a central role.

“McConnell’s vote surprised some since he had publicly expressed such displeasure with Trump’s attempts to overturn the election. It was thought that perhaps McConnell might lead his conference to convict Trump, holding him accountable for his atrocious behavior.

“But ultimately McConnell came around to Paul’s view — also shared by legal scholar Jonathan Turley, Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, and several others — that the Constitution doesn’t permit the trial of a former president, and that ‘perhaps impeachment just isn’t,’ as conservative godfather George Will wrote, ‘worth it.’

“…While many Republican senators know Trump is in the wrong, they simply didn’t want to confront him (and his supporters) when it wasn’t clear that conviction would have any real-world effect on him, anyway. The wisdom of this is in question, but the reality is not.

“Does this make them feel good about themselves? Probably not. Who can feel good about allowing someone — even a former president — to get away with such egregious behavior? Letting Trump off the hook could incite a future president to push the envelope even further (now that presidents can absolve themselves by simply resigning following an unconstitutional bender), and it undermines a fundamental lesson we teach our children: that cheaters never prosper…” (Courier Journal).

“Mitch McConnell told GOP colleagues in a letter that he will vote to acquit Donald Trump in the former president's impeachment trial, according to sources familiar with the communication. McConnell's announcement ends a long period of silence over whether he would consider convicting Trump for incitement of insurrection and could pave the way for many other Republicans to follow in acquittal. The Kentuckian shared his decision in a note to fellow GOP senators on Saturday morning, ahead of what could be the final day of Trump’s second impeachment trial. ‘While a close call, I am persuaded that impeachments are a tool primarily of removal and we therefore lack jurisdiction,’ McConnell wrote.

“That position puts McConnell in line with the votes he and 43 other GOP senators already cast, declaring Trump’s second trial unconstitutional. But the Republican leader, who has not spoken to Trump for weeks, suggested that criminal prosecution of the former president could be appropriate as a remedy following the violent Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol. ‘The Constitution makes it perfectly clear that Presidential criminal misconduct while in office can be prosecuted after the President has left office, which in my view alleviates the otherwise troubling ‘January exception’ argument raised by the House,’ McConnell wrote to fellow Republicans.

“McConnell is not whipping colleagues on their votes, but the decision of the GOP leader to acquit Trump will certainly tamp down the number of ‘yes’ votes. As many as 10 senators were thought to be considering a conviction vote as of Friday, but it's become harder and harder to see many senators convicting Trump other than the six who have voted to proceed” (Politico, Feb. 13, 2021).

WASHINGTON — Moments after voting to acquit Donald Trump, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell gave a speech excoriating the former president for a "disgraceful dereliction of duty" and said he holds him responsible for "provoking" the Jan. 6 siege of the Capitol.

McConnell was among the 43 Republicans who voted that Trump was "not guilty" on the charge of incitement of insurrection.

"There's no question, none, that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day. No question about it," the Kentucky Republican said Saturday. "The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their president."

"And having that belief was a foreseeable consequence of the growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories and reckless hyperbole which the defeated president kept shouting into the largest megaphone on planet earth," he continued.

McConnell said the deadly riot was the product of "increasingly wild myths" and "an intensifying crescendo of conspiracy theories orchestrated by an outgoing president who seemed determined to either overturn the voters' decision, or else torch our institutions on the way out."

But despite all the criticism, he said he voted "not guilty" because he believes Trump is "constitutionally not eligible for conviction" given that he is no longer president.

The riot occurred on Jan. 6. The House impeached Trump on Jan. 13, while he was still president. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said the House was ready to send the article to the upper chamber on Jan. 15 but couldn't because the Senate was out of session. At the time, McConnell opposed returning sooner, arguing that a fair trial could not be conducted and concluded in the short time Trump had left in office.

"It is so pathetic that Senator McConnell kept the Senate shut down so that the Senate could not receive the Article of Impeachment and has used that as his excuse for not voting to convict Donald Trump," Pelosi said in a statement Saturday… (NBC News, Feb. 13, 2021).