McConnell says “the MAGA movement is completely wrong” and Reagan “wouldn't recognize Trump's Republicans.”

CNN
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Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell delivered a scathing assessment of the modern Republican Party in an upcoming biography, saying the “MAGA movement was completely wrong” and that Ronald Reagan would “not recognize” the party today.

“I think Trump was the biggest factor in changing the Republican Party from what Ronald Reagan saw, and he wouldn't recognize it today,” McConnell told Michael Tackett of the Associated Press for the upcoming biography “The Price of Power,” which CNN had previously received its release.

McConnell added that the former president “did great damage to our party’s image and our competitiveness.”

“Trump appeals to people who haven't been as successful as others and provides an excuse that these more successful people have somehow been deceived and you don't deserve to think of yourself as less successful because things weren't as successful.” “It wasn’t fair,” he said.

Some of McConnell's strongest comments focused on Trump's behavior after his 2020 election loss, calling him “erratic.”

“Unfortunately, about half of the Republicans in the country believe whatever he says,” McConnell said at the time, adding to an oral historian: “I think I can say fairly confidently that not only are Democrats counting down the days until he leaves office on January 20th, but Republicans are as well.” McConnell gave Tackett access to his personal archives for the book, including an oral history, which he has been recording since 1995.

The Republican leader ultimately voted to acquit Trump in the second impeachment trial, which focused on the former president's involvement in the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. However, Tackett reports that at certain points McConnell leaned toward voting to convict.

“I am not at all unclear about whether what the president did is a criminal offense. I think that's it. “Calling for an insurrection and having people attack the Capitol as a direct result … is as close to a criminal offense as you can imagine, with the possible exception of perhaps being an agent for another country,” McConnell said.

“I don't know if you can argue conclusively that he is directly responsible for the storming of the Capitol, but I think there's no question that these people wouldn't have been here in the first place if he hadn't asked them to come and disrupting the actual acceptance of the election results,” the Senate GOP leader said.

The Kentucky Republican didn't mince his words, calling Trump a “sleazeball,” a “narcissist” and saying the former president was “both stupid and ill-tempered.” He added that Trump is “not very smart, short-tempered, mean, pretty much every quality you wouldn't want in anyone.”

While he dismissed Trump's attacks against him, saying, “Every time he shoots at me, I think it's good for my reputation,” he added that the former president's attacks on his wife Elaine Chao, Trump's former Minister of Transport, went too far.

In 2022, Trump referred to Chao as McConnell's “China-loving wife Coco Chow” in a post on Truth Social. Tackett reported that Chao was “deeply disturbed” by the comments, and McConnell said his wife was “not used to taking a hit.”

Tackett also reported that McConnell cried as he addressed his staff in the hours after the attack on the Capitol. “You are my employees and you are my responsibility,” he told them. “You are my family and I hate the fact that you had to go through this.”

He called the rioters who entered the Senate chamber “narcissistic, just like Donald Trump, who sat in the vice president's chair and took photos of himself,” adding that it was a “shocking incident and further evidence of Donald Trump's utter discontent.” Unfitness for office.”

In a statement to CNN about his comments about the former president in the book, McConnell said: “Whatever I have said about President Trump pales in comparison to what JD Vance, Lindsey Graham and others have said about him, but all of us have “They are.” now on the same team.”

The Senate The GOP leader and the former president have long had a rocky relationship, which Tackett details in the book. However, McConnell has supported Trump and met with him off the Hill back in June of this year during Trump's meetings with Senate Republicans.

McConnell did not limit his comments in the biography to the former president. He also criticized Sen. Rick Scott, who led the Senate Republican Campaign Committee during the 2022 midterm elections and proposed a highly controversial policy plan that drew criticism from both parties before unsuccessfully challenging McConnell for Senate Republican leader. Scott has announced he will run for leadership again this year, but this time he will not be running against McConnell, who will step down from his leadership post.

“I don’t think Rick is a particularly good victim,” McConnell quipped. “I think he did a poor job running the Senate Campaign Committee. His plan was used by the Democrats against our candidates last weekend (before the election). He spread the fiction that we were in the middle of a major raid, even though there was no tangible evidence of this. And I think his campaign against me was kind of an unfortunate attempt to divert attention from him to someone else.”

McConnell will continue in his role as Senate GOP leader through the end of the year until the start of the new Congress in early January.

The Kentucky Republican, who previously said he was most proud of his legacy in shaping the Supreme Court and leading the effort to confirm three new conservative justices during Trump's presidency, acknowledged that Justice Clarence Thomas's “pretty questionable judgment.” “I was practicing” when he decided to accept trips from a major GOP donor. “But then again, I’m not sure what the rules are,” he added.

When asked in April 2023 about reports of the trips, McConnell accused Democratic senators of launching political attacks on Thomas. “The Supreme Court and the court system are a whole separate part of our Constitution,” he said. “And Democrats, it seems to me, spend a lot of time criticizing individual members of the court and persecuting the court as an institution.”

McConnell has already praised Thomas' judgment and his work on the court. “I have every confidence in Judge Thomas’s impartiality in every aspect of the court’s work,” he said on the Senate floor in 2022, before reports of Thomas’ trip emerged.

McConnell also expressed support for special counsel Jack Smith's investigation into Trump's actions related to the 2020 election and the insurrection. “I think it was clearest – in a category of its own – how wrong this all was, and there's no doubt who the inspiration for this was, and I just hope he pays a price for it,” McConnell said . “If he hasn’t committed any criminal acts, I don’t know what is.”

CNN's Manu Raju and Ted Barrett contributed to this report.