POLITICUSUSA
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) avoided commenting on the hold former President Donald Trump has on the GOP, pivoting discussion instead to the Republican Party’s hopes for the midterm elections, a time when incumbent administrations typically lose seats.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) appeared to try and distance himself from the controversy surrounding efforts by Republicans to oust Representative Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) because she has refused to back former President Donald Trump’s falsehoods about the 2020 general election.
For decades, big business and the Republican party have had a symbiotic relationship. Big business donates large sums of money to the GOP and in return, Republicans pass major tax breaks.
But over the last decade or so, the GOP has been getting soundly defeated in the culture war. And as Republicans try to pass legislation meant to harm other Americans, companies are breaking away from them. During a Tuesday segment, the Morning Joe panel mocked Mitch McConnell for being surprised by this.
In the 6 years he was in charge of the senate, Mitch McConnell wielded his power with an iron fist. The Kentucky lawmaker showed no interest in anything Democrats had to say. He pushed through 3 Supreme Court and a massive tax break for the richest Americans.
The message they send to Americans is clear: “Stay out of politics and leave the destruction of you and your country to us.”
An excerpt from journalist Susan Page’s biography of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) titled Madame Speaker shows Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) have an icy relationship.
“Mitch McConnell is not a force for good in our country,” Pelosi is quoted as saying. “He is an enabler of some of the worst stuff, and an instigator of some of it on his own.”
President Joe Biden will order a 180-day commission that will explore the mechanics behind expanding the Supreme Court. The commission will provide a forum to debate the matter outside of Congress, whose own proceedings are likely to be significantly polarized.
Although Biden has not clarified his own views on expanding the court, the decision to engage the commission via executive order fulfills a campaign promise he made amid growing concerns from activists that the court is imbalanced.
“There’s growing recognition that the Supreme Court poses a danger to the health and well-being of the nation and even to democracy itself,”
Aaron Belkin, director of the group Take Back the Court, told The New York Times
After 5 years plus of pulling the senate strings, Mitch McConnell is not enjoying his time as the Senate Minority Leader. Once Democrats took control, McConnell threatened to regularly hold up bills using the filibuster. But the Senate Parliamentarian has largely taken care of that.
McConnell has decided that the easiest way to get back in control is to pass restrictive voting laws. But a number of corporations have spoken out against the legislation, specifically Georgia’s new restrictions. McConnell recently warned those companies and Nicolle Wallace found his threats hilarious.
The Kentucky lawmaker said on Tuesday, “My advice to the corporate CEOs of America is to stay out of politics. Don’t pick sides in these big fights.”
Wallace tackled those comments on tonight’s show. She began:
“McConnell put out a statement saying that companies, ‘will invite serious consequences,’ whoo! ‘If they continue to speak out’. He followed that up today by calling corporations responding to Georgia’s law, ‘Stupid because,’ ‘Republicans drink Coca-Cola, too and we fly and we like baseball.’ There is such an irony, though, to the GOP war on corporations. Of course, no one has fought harder for corporate dollars to have more power in American politics than, wait for it, Mitch McConnell.”
https://twitter.com/politicususa/status/1379561853370695686
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) tore into corporations whose CEOs have spoken out against Georgia’s new voting restrictions, urging them to stay out of politics.
“My advice to the corporate CEOs of America is to stay out of politics. Don’t pick sides in these big fights,” McConnell said.
McConnell’s criticisms appear at odds with his own record of accepting corporate donations. His re-election campaign “
received a total of $258,880 from 37 chief executives whose companies are components of the S&P 500 stock index
This sweeping legislation isn’t just about suppressing the vote; it’s about prohibiting collective care and action, criminalizing any sense of human solidarity, any acting upon the recognition that others’ lives matter.
Speaking to the Ruthless podcast in an episode released earlier this morning, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) claimed reforming the filibuster would lead to a “nuclear winter” in the Senate, hampering bipartisan coordination.
“I think if they destroy the essence of the Senate, the legislative filibuster, they will find a Senate that will not function,” he said. “It takes unanimous consent to turn the lights on here. And I think they would leave an angry 50 senators not interested in being cooperative on even the simplest things.”
Former President Donald Trump said ending the filibuster would be “catastrophic” for the GOP, voicing his support as Democrats continue to face calls to scrap it entirely.
“Look, he’s hanging by a thread right now with respect to the filibuster,” Trump said of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) during an interview on the podcast “The Truth with Lisa Boothe.” “And if they get the filler, he’s hanging on [Democratic Senator] Joe Manchin, who always goes with the Democrats. Joe talks, but he ends up going with the Democrats. Now there’s another great senator from the state of Arizona. He’s hanging by a thread and if they get rid of the filibuster, if they knock it out, it will be catastrophic for the Republican Party.”
“But if you look at what happened in the election
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) dismissed Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell‘s (R-Ky.) threat to employ “scorched earth” tactics if Democrats successfully get rid of the filibuster.
“We used to call the Senate, when he was in charge, the legislative graveyard,” Schumer told Stephen Colbert during an interview on The Late Show. “The House would send over good bills that had a lot of popular support. He might oppose them, fair enough, but he wouldn’t even put them on the floor for a vote.”
McConnell has sought to protect the filibuster, insisting that eliminating it would amount to a power grab on the part of the Democrats. Democrats, meanwhile, are facing calls from their constituents to eliminate it so they can implement their agenda without necessarily requiring Republican support.
In making his threat, McConnell, the former Senate Majority Leader, could find ways to complicate President Joe Biden‘s ability to deliver on his legislative agenda. Once Biden took office, he wanted assurances that there would be no use of the so-called “nuclear option,” which would allow Senate rules to be changed with a simple majority vote.
Asked if McConnell could “grind things to a halt” in an evenly divided chamber, Schumer was firm: “I’m not even going to give this blustery threat credence. We’re going to move forward. Period.”
You can watch the interview below.
Republicans have grown very leery about the fact that the Democrats have control of the House, Senate and White House. Mitch McConnell threw a bit of a fit the other day making demands and threats about what the Republicans would do when they’re back in power.
The Democrats were able to pass their major stimulus bill without any help from Republicans. To push many of their future plans through, though, they may have to abolish the filibuster. On Thursday, Martin Heinrich called for the filibuster to either be reformed or abolished all together.
The New Mexico senator said in a statement:
“The filibuster should be abolished or, at the very least, reformed to force senators to physically hold the floor to extend debate. Too often the filibuster has been used to block our country’s continued march toward equality. We must change this. Georgia legislators are attempting to take Sunday voting away. They want to prevent Black voters from participating in our elections. Let’s call this what it is: A racist attempt to steal future elections. We have the legislation to stop this. The For the People Act would restore voting rights to Americans targeted by efforts like those in Georgia. We can’t let the filibuster continue to shield structural racism in our country. I cannot support the continued abuse of the filibuster in the United States Senate.”
https://twitter.com/MartinHeinrich/status/1372674463284797444
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has threatened to employ “scorched earth” tactics if Democrats successfully get rid of the filibuster, according to Reuters.
McConnell has sought to protect the filibuster, insisting that eliminating it would amount to a power grab on the part of the Democrats. Democrats, meanwhile, are facing calls from their constituents to eliminate it so they can implement their agenda without necessarily requiring Republican support.
In making his threat, McConnell, the former Senate Majority Leader, could find ways to complicate President Joe Biden‘s ability to deliver on his legislative agenda. Once Biden took office, wanted assurances that there would be no use of the so-called “nuclear option,” which would allow Senate rules to be changed with a simple majority vote.
“It’s unclear if an alternative to protecting the filibuster in writing, like a handshake agreement between Schumer
If Democrats want to save democracy and work toward unity, they must remove the obstacle of the filibuster.
QAnon played a major role in the January 6th insurrection on the Capitol. More than a few of the mob members could be seen wearing QAnon paraphernalia. Other insurrectionists could be seen waving QAnon flags.
But Tucker Carlson has made a commitment to gaslighting his viewers, even if the evidence is right there in front of their faces. On Tuesday night, the Fox host said there is no evidence that QAnon even exists.
Carlson told his audience:
“So it’s worth finding out where the public is getting all this false information. This disinformation as we’ll call it. So we checked. We spent all day trying to locate the famous QAnon. Which in the end we learned is not even a website. If it’s out there, we couldn’t even find it. Then we checked Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Twitter ’cause we have heard she traffics in disinformation, CNN told us. But nothing there.”
Tucker Carlson says he couldn't find any evidence that the Qanon conspiracy theory even exists, like theres nothing out there proving that it's a thing pic.twitter.com/tqeYm73pAb
— Andrew Lawrence (@ndrew_lawrence)
February 24, 2021
Donald Trump would very much like to be the future of the Republican party. He certainly has a lot of support. 43 senators just voted to acquit him during his impeachment trial. Over 150 congresspeople decided to join in on his election fight.
But there are those that don’t want to see Trump be the GOP standard bearer. Republican voters don’t tend to turn out when the former president isn’t on the ballot. This was clear during the January Georgia mid-terms where Democrats took control of the senate. Mitch McConnell is the leader of this faction.
Lindsey Graham, though, thinks his long-term colleague is wrong about Trump. And the South Carolina senator said that he might with the former president this weekend to strategize on the 2022 mid-terms.
Graham told reporters on Monday, “He’s very involved in helping the team win.” Trump “made a bunch of phone calls” and is “trying to get the best team on the field.”
New: Senator Lindsey Graham says he spent considerable time with Donald Trump this past weekend calling key lawmakers on the ballot in 2022, especially GOP senators, to offer encouragement. “He spent a lot of time on the phone, “ Graham reported in a brief interview. 1/2
Mitch McConnell doesn’t want Donald Trump to have anything to do with his party anymore. Trump was useful for a while. Wealthy people got a huge tax break and there are 3 new Conservative Supreme Court Justices.
But in the Senate Minority Leaders’ mind, Trump just cost Republicans the Georgia runoffs. And McConnell is reportedly ready to just ignore Trump for the next few years.
The 45th president, though, isn’t the kind of man to let any kind of slight go. And according to a new report, Trump is ready to start fundraising in an effort to defeat McConnell and his candidates.
S.V. Dáte from the Huff Post writes:
“After lying low for nearly a month after leaving office, Donald Trump is ramping up a return to relevancy that will involve renewed fundraising and continuing attacks on a new nemesis: the highest-ranking Republican in Washington, Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell. Trump has not been collecting money for his Save America leadership committee since Jan. 6, the day a mob he incited attacked the U.S. Capitol, but a website that will permit him to tap into his lucrative small-donor list will be up and running within days, said a Republican familiar with his plans.”
Since the day he left the White House, Donald Trump has been relatively quiet. The Twitter ban, thankfully, has prevented him from easily communicating with his supporters and dissenters.
But there were two recent events that brought Trump out from hiding. The first was the anti-Trump speech given by Mitch McConnell on Saturday. The other was today’s death of Rush Limbaugh.
Tonight, the 45th president will be giving interviews to Newsmax, OAN and Fox News. During the Newsmax interview, host Greg Kelly asked Trump is he was planning on running again in 2024.
“
It’s too early to say, but I see a lot of great polls out there, that’s for sure,” he responded. “We have tremendous support. I won’t say yet [if I’m running again] but I have tremendous support and I’m looking at poll numbers that are through the roof…I’m the only guy who gets impeached and my numbers go up.”