GOP is freaking out over Texas Senate race

A prominent right-wing super PAC is begging its donors to help prop up Texas GOP Sen. John Cornyn's Senate bid, saying that if he is not the nominee, the seat could flip to Democrats next November, Punchbowl News reported.

According to a slide presentation from the Senate Leadership Fund—a super PAC tied to outgoing Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky—Cornyn is currently losing to scandal-plagued Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton by an average of 17 percentage points.

In the presentation, SLF noted that it may need as much as $70 million to help Cornyn survive the primary. They view this as a necessary expenditure as they fear Paxton could lose a general election to a Democrat. 

According to one slide in the deck, SLF presented polling showing Cornyn leads Democratic Senate candidate Collin Allred by 6 points in a hypothetical head-to-head matchup, while Paxton trails Allred by 1 point. What’s more, SLF said that if Cornyn loses the primary to Paxton, Republicans could need to spend as much as $250 million to prop up Paxton in a general election matchup.

Texas has been reliably Republican in presidential years, and no Democrat has won a Senate seat in the state since 1988. However, in a midterm with President Donald Trump in office, the seat could prove more competitive.

Back in 2018—Trump's first midterm year—Republicans barely held on to Texas' Senate seat, with Republican Ted Cruz defeating Democrat Beto O'Rourke by just over 2 points.

Paxton would be as much of a liability for Republicans as loathsome Cruz—or more.

Texas Sens. John Cornyn, left, and Ted Cruz pose for pictures in 2019 near Sarita, Texas.

Paxton was indicted on felony securities fraud charges, though they were later dropped in 2024, in exchange for agreeing to perform community service.

Paxton was also impeached by the state House in 2023 for alleged bribery and allegedly having an affair, but he was acquitted of the charges by the state Senate, which Republicans control.

And in July, Paxton's wife—state Sen. Angela Paxton—filed for divorce from Paxton, accusing him of adultery.

However, while those abhorrent actions would be a liability in a general election, Republican primary voters—who love Trump, a notorious adulterer and corrupt leader—are not as repelled by Paxton’s behavior. 

Indeed, SLF said in their slide presentation that Cornyn is losing because GOP primary voters view Paxton as more conservative.

Seeking to change his grim odds in the race, Cornyn has been desperate for Trump to weigh in on the race. Cornyn told Fox News in July that he has spoken to Trump about a prospective endorsement, saying that would guarantee him a primary win. 

Cornyn also pandered to Trump by trying to sic the FBI on the Texas Democratic lawmakers who fled the state to prevent Republicans from corruptly redrawing the state's congressional maps to rig the 2026 midterm elections. Trump ordered Texas to redraw the state’s congressional map, hoping it would make it harder for Democrats to win the U.S. House next November and save him from facing investigations and a check on his power.

Paxton is also hoping for Trump’s endorsement, going as far as reportedly stalking Trump on a recent trip to Scotland to win Trump’s blessing. 

Texas’ Senate contest is currently rated a “Likely Republican” contest by Inside Elections, a nonpartisan political handicapping outlet. 

Mitch McConnell’s legacy comes under fire in Kentucky race to replace him in the Senate

Republican Nate Morris had deftly warmed up a crowd of party faithful, gushing about President Donald Trump and recounting his own life’s journey — from hardscrabble childhood to wealthy entrepreneur — when he turned his attention to the man he wants to replace, Sen. Mitch McConnell.

That's when things got feisty. While bashing Kentucky's longest-serving senator at a GOP dinner on the eve of Saturday's Fancy Farm picnic, a tradition-laden stop on the state's political circuit, Morris was cut off in midsentence by a party activist in the crowd, who noted that McConnell isn't seeking reelection and pointedly asked Morris: “What are you running on?”

Morris touted his hard line stance on immigration and defended Trump's tariffs as a boon for American manufacturing. But he didn't retreat from his harsh critique of McConnell.

“We’ve seen 40 years of doing it the same way," Morris said. "And, yes, he’s not on the ballot, but his legacy is on the ballot. Do you want 40 more years of that? I don’t think you do.”

McConnell's blunt-force approach used against him

The pushback from a county GOP chairman revealed the political risks of attacking the 83-year-old McConnell in the twilight of his career. Towering over Kentucky politics for decades, McConnell is regarded as the master strategist behind the GOP's rise to power in a state long dominated by Democrats. The state Republican headquarters bears McConnell's name. As the longest-serving Senate party leader in U.S. history, McConnell guided Republican policymaking and helped forge a conservative Supreme Court. Back home, his appropriating skills showered Kentucky with federal funding.

Now, his blunt-force style of campaigning — which undercut so many foes — is being used against him.

Related | McConnell announces he's done taking a dump all over democracy

Morris is running against two other prominent Republicans — U.S. Rep. Andy Barr and former state Attorney General Daniel Cameron — for McConnell's seat. The outcome will be decided in the spring primary next year. Kentucky hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate since Wendell Ford in 1992.

All three Republican hopefuls lavish praise on Trump — in hopes of landing his endorsement — but also have ties to McConnell, who mentored generations of aspirational Republicans. Cameron and Barr have chided McConnell at times, but it's been mild compared to Morris' attacks. Morris interned for McConnell but glosses over that connection.

McConnell pushes back

Mitch McConnell and his wife, Elaine Chao, acknowledge applause at the annual Fancy Farm picnic on Aug. 2 in Fancy Farm, Ky. 

At events surrounding the Fancy Farm picnic, an event long known for caustic zingers that he has always relished, McConnell showed no sign of backing down.

“Surely this isn’t true, but I’ve heard that one of the candidates running for my office wants to be different,” McConnell told a Republican crowd that included Morris at a pre-picnic breakfast in Mayfield. “Now, I’m wondering how you’d want to be different from the longest-serving Senate leader in American history. I’m wondering how you’d want to be different in supporting President Trump.”

McConnell received multiple standing ovations. Morris stayed seated.

McConnell has consistently voted for Trump's policies more often than Kentucky's other Republican senator, Rand Paul, according to a Congressional Quarterly voting analysis. McConnell recently supported Trump's signature tax and spending measure. Paul opposed it, saying it would drive up debt.

Yet Morris has taken on McConnell, who has famously had an up-and-down relationship with Trump.

McConnell teamed with Trump to put conservatives on the federal bench and pass tax cuts during the president's first term. McConnell also guided the Senate — and Trump — through two impeachment trials that ended in acquittals. But the relationship was severed after McConnell blamed Trump for “disgraceful” acts in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack by Trump's supporters.

McConnell endorsed Trump in 2024, but in a biography by Michael Tackett of The Associated Press, released shortly before the election, McConnell described him as “a despicable human being.”

Running against career politicians

Morris, who started a waste management technology company, says the senator has been insufficiently loyal to Trump and allowed festering issues like immigration and the national debt to grow worse during his years in Senate leadership.

Morris wants to tether his opponents to McConnell while running on anti-establishment themes that his campaign thinks will appeal to legions of Trump supporters in the Bluegrass State.

Nate Morris speaks at the annual Fancy Farm picnic on Aug. 2 in Fancy Farm, Ky.

“Let’s face it, folks, career politicians have run this country off a cliff,” Morris said.

Morris' rivals sum up the anti-McConnell attacks as an angry, backward-looking message. Cameron called it a diversionary tactic to obscure what he said is Morris' lack of both a message and credibility as a supporter of Trump's MAGA movement.

"He can’t talk about his actual record. So he has to choose to pick on an 83-year-old,” Cameron said.

At Fancy Farm, where candidates hurl insults at one another against a backdrop of bingo games and barbecue feasts, Morris took a swipe at McConnell's health.

“I have a serious question: who here can honestly tell me that it’s a good thing to have a senior citizen who freezes on national television during his press conferences as our U.S. senator?” Morris said. "It seems, to me, maybe just maybe, Mitch’s time to leave the Senate was a long time ago."

McConnell had his customary front-row seat for much of the event but wasn't there for Morris' remarks. He typically leaves before all the speeches are delivered and exited before his would-be successors spoke.

Living by the sword

McConnell complimented Trump in his speech, singling out Trump's bombing of Iranian nuclear sites.

“He turned Iran's nuclear program into a pile of rocks,” McConnell, a steadfast advocate for a muscular U.S. foreign policy, said to cheers.

At the GOP dinner the night before in Calvert City, where candidates typically are more politely received, party activist Frank Amaro confronted Morris for his anti-McConnell barrage.

“He keeps bashing Mitch McConnell like he’s running against Mitch McConnell,” Amaro, a county Republican chairman, said afterward. “Overall, he’s helped Kentucky and the United States, especially our Supreme Court, more than any other U.S. senator in this country.”

But Morris' blistering assessment of McConnell hit the mark with Trump supporter Patrick Marion, who applied the dreaded Republican-in-Name-Only label to McConnell.

“Personally, I think Mitch has been a RINO for way too long,” Marion said later. “I don't think he was a true MAGA supporter of President Trump.”

Afterward, Morris was in no mood to back off.

“He’s the nastiest politician maybe in the history of this state if not in the history of this country,” Morris said of McConnell. "Look, you live by the sword, you die by the sword.”

McConnell announces he’s done taking a dump all over democracy

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), the former Senate Republican leader who is in large part responsible for helping destroy American democracy, will announce on Thursday that he is not running for reelection, the Associated Press reported

“Seven times, my fellow Kentuckians have sent me to the Senate,” McConnell will say in a speech on the Senate floor, according to prepared remarks obtained by the AP. “Every day in between I’ve been humbled by the trust they’ve placed in me to do their business here. Representing our commonwealth has been the honor of a lifetime. I will not seek this honor an eighth time. My current term in the Senate will be my last.”

It’s hard to pinpoint the worst things McConnell has done in office, because he’s done so many horrendous things. McConnell is responsible for breaking the Senate, weaponizing the filibuster to keep legislation from passing.

He is also responsible for stealing not one but two Supreme Court seats from Democratic presidents. In 2016, McConnell gleefully blocked former President Barack Obama from being able to fill the seat of the late Justice Antonin Scalia, refusing to give Obama’s nominee a hearing, let alone a vote on the Senate floor because he said it was too close to an election. Then in 2020, he conveniently said that rule no longer applied when Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, confirming Donald Trump’s pick to fill Ginsburg’s seat just eight days before the 2020 election.

It wasn’t just the Supreme Court that he helped stack. McConnell blocked dozens of Obama’s lower court nominees, holding those seats vacant so that Trump could fill the seats after he was elected. And he shepherded through Trump’s judicial nominees, including ones that were blatantly unqualified.

Even more galling is that when Trump won a second term in November, McConnell then cried foul when federal judges decided to no longer retire to keep Trump from choosing their replacements, accusing them of playing politics with the judiciary.

Trump and McConnell

“They rolled the dice that a Democrat could replace them, and now that he won’t, they’re changing their plans to keep a Republican from doing it,” McConnell, the master of playing politics with the judiciary, said in a speech on the Senate floor.

McConnell stepped down from GOP Senate leadership in 2024, saying it was time to pass the torch.

“One of life’s most underappreciated talents is to know when it’s time to move on to life’s next chapter,” McConnell said in February 2024. “So I stand before you today ... to say that this will be my last term as Republican leader of the Senate.”

Since then, he’s seemingly found his spine, criticizing Trump’s worst impulses and voting against Trump’s unqualified and dangerous Cabinet nominees, including now-Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and now-Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Yet McConnell voted for Trump in 2024, even though he thought Trump was, in his own words, a “stupid … narcissist.”

And Trump wouldn’t even be in the Oval Office now if McConnell had done the right thing in Trump’s 2021 impeachment and voted to convict Trump of inciting the insurrection at the Capitol and bar him from running for the presidency again. 

McConnell believed Trump was responsible for the attack, saying that the insurrectionists, “were provoked by the president and other powerful people, and they tried to use fear and violence to stop a specific proceeding of the first branch of the federal government which they did not like.”

But McConnell voted against convicting Trump, and did not work to convince other Republican senators to vote to ban Trump from seeking federal office in the future.

Ultimately, McConnell has been a menace in American politics. He will not be missed.

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Trump’s new low: Swiping at McConnell’s childhood polio

President Donald Trump insulted Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and questioned his childhood battle with polio after the senator opposed anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s confirmation Thursday to be the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. 

When asked by a reporter whether McConnell’s past bout with polio influenced his “no” vote, Trump responded, “I have no idea if he had polio. All I can tell you about him is that he shouldn’t have been leader.”

The president added, “[McConnell’s] not voting against Bobby, he’s voting against me.” He later called McConnell “a very bitter guy.”

McConnell has voted against several of Trump’s recent Cabinet picks, including Tulsi Gabbard (for director of national intelligence), Pete Hegseth (for secretary of defense), and Kennedy. In the cases of Gabbard and Kennedy, McConnell was the only Republican to buck the president. With Hegseth’s vote, however, two other Republican senators—Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska—joined him in voting against Trump’s nominee.

In addition to calling Trump a “despicable human being,” a “narcissist,” and “stupid” in a recent biography, McConnell has blasted Trump’s sweeping use of tariffs. He said they were “bad policy” and would raise prices.

Trump’s “aggressive proposals leave big, lingering concerns for American industry and workers,” McConnell wrote in a Wednesday op-ed for Louisville’s Courier-Journal.

Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky

McConnell wasn’t always this big of a thorn in Trump’s side, though. At the beginning of Trump’s first term, the senator helped Trump confirm hundreds of judges and fill three Supreme Court vacancies—moves that will shape the judiciary for a generation. (Notably, in 2016, McConnell helped block Merrick Garland, whom then-President Barack Obama nominated to the Supreme Court, from getting a hearing.) McConnell was also instrumental in Trump’s 2017 effort to pass sweeping tax cuts for the wealthy.

Despite minor disagreements, the Republicans’ relationship didn’t turn icy until the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. McConnell called Trump “practically and morally responsible” for the insurrection, but ultimately, he did not vote to convict the president.  

The two also squabbled over the party’s failure to repeal the Affordable Care Act during Trump’s first administration. (More recently, McConnell said the repeal effort against the law seems “largely over.”) And they have traded a fair share of nasty personal attacks. Despite this, McConnell still endorsed Trump’s reelection bid. 

McConnell, who will turn 83 this month, is up for reelection in 2026, but it’s unclear whether he’ll run again. He’s suffered a series of falls as of late, including two last week. A spokesperson for the senator suggested that “the lingering effects of polio in his left leg” contributed to it, but said the fall would not disrupt McConnell’s “regular schedule of work.”

It makes sense, then, that McConnell would vote against Kennedy, an alleged animal abuser with a history of attacking vaccination and promoting bogus conspiracy theories. Shortly after his confirmation, Kennedy appeared on Fox News and confirmed there were plans to cut the number of HHS employees. Notably, Kennedy said those who have been “involved in good science” (whatever that means!) have “nothing to worry about.”

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an anti-vaccine nut now in charge of the Department of Health and Human Services

“If you care about public health, you’ve got nothing to worry about. If you’re in there working for the pharmaceutical industry, then I should say you should move out and work for the pharmaceutical industry,” he said.

On Thursday, Trump questioned McConnell’s mental acuity and said “he’s not equipped” to lead the GOP. This is the Trump way: viciously attack anyone who doesn’t do your bidding, regardless of how they’ve helped you in the past. It’s also a classic authoritarian tactic, and given that Trump is a petty narcissist, it’s not shocking that he’s going after McConnell.

That said, McConnell doesn’t deserve a pat on the back for voting against just a handful of Trump’s awful nominees. The senator’s pushback is not just politically convenient—he’s no longer Senate majority leader—but it also comes far too late in the game. 

Maybe McConnell feels guilty for elevating Trump and is voting against the Cabinet picks as a way to make up for his past transgressions. Either way, given how much he helped Trump to get to where he is now, he’s just as complicit in the downfall of American democracy

McConnell doesn’t get a pass.

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McConnell’s still whining about Trump—even though he voted for him

Outgoing Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell once again sat for an interview in which he crapped all over Donald Trump, warning that the president-elect’s foreign policy ideas pose a danger not only to the United States but to the whole world.

In an interview with the Financial Times, McConnell said Trump and the Republican Party's isolationist views are a threat, as “the cost of deterrence is considerably less than the cost of war."

“To most American voters, I think the simple answer is, ‘Let’s stay out of it.’ That was the argument made in the ’30s and that just won’t work,” McConnell told the Financial Times. “Thanks to [Ronald] Reagan, we know what does work—not just saying peace through strength, but demonstrating it.”

Yet in that very same interview, McConnell admitted that he voted for Trump anyway.

“I supported the ticket,” McConnell said, refusing to even utter Trump's name.

What’s more, McConnell declined to say whether he should have done more to stop Trump from becoming president for the second time. McConnell had the chance to prevent Trump from running for president again during the Senate impeachment trial over Trump’s actions on Jan. 6, 2021. McConnell voted to acquit Trump, even though he said Trump was responsible for the insurrection at the Capitol that sought to overturn the free and fair election of Joe Biden.

It's not the first time McConnell has spoken ill of Trump. In October, excerpts from a McConnell biography were released in which McConnell called Trump “stupid,” a “narcissist,” and a “despicable human being." 

Yet despite thinking Trump is an awful person, McConnell endorsed Trump's 2024 comeback as he made those same attacks against the leader of the Republican Party.

“It is abundantly clear that former President Trump has earned the requisite support of Republican voters to be our nominee for President of the United States. It should come as no surprise that as nominee, he will have my support," McConnell said in March.

But McConnell's hypocrisy is not a surprise. Earlier in December, McConnell accused federal judges of playing politics by reneging on their decisions to retire in order to prevent Trump from choosing their replacements. But McConnell wrote the book on playing politics with the courts, as he stole a Supreme Court seat from former President Barack Obama, as well as a number of other judicial seats on lower courts. 

He also blocked a bicameral commission to probe the Jan. 6 insurrection, even though he believed Trump was responsible for the riot that led to the assault of more than 140 law enforcement officers.

While McConnell won’t be part of Senate GOP leadership next year, he is sticking around Capitol Hill. He claimed to the Financial Times that without the constraints of being in leadership, he will now push back on Trump and his own party’s isolationist policies.

“No matter who got elected president, I think it was going to require significant pushback, yeah, and I intend to be one of the pushers,” McConnell said.

But given that he’s always capitulated to Trump, color us skeptical. 

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Senate leader vote could indicate troubles ahead for Trump and MAGA

Rick Scott of Florida was ousted from the race for Senate Republican leader on Wednesday, losing on the first ballot of the race to replace Sen. Mitch McConnell.

Scott garnered just 13 votes from the 51 Republicans voting in the first round.

His poor performance came even as Scott had the endorsement of MAGA loyalists, including Elon Musk, the freak right-wing billionaire who is acting as a sort of shadow president-elect. And let’s not forget MAGA media personalities like racist 9/11 truther Laura Loomer, Russia apologist Tucker Carlsonbigot and misogynist Charlie Kirk, and plagiarist and Russia's useful idiot Benny Johnson.

“Rick Scott for Senate Majority Leader!” Musk wrote in a post on X, after Scott endorsed Trump’s demand to allow him to make recess appointments for his administration to bypass the Senate’s advice and consent role.

“Rick Scott of Florida is the only candidate who agrees with Donald Trump,” Carlson wrote in a post on X. “Call your senator and demand a public endorsement of Rick Scott."

"A vote for Rick Scott is a vote to END the anti-Trump rot of Mitch McConnell in the US Senate,” Johnson said on X. “Thune and Cornyn are a continuation of McConnell's total failure."

Those endorsements led Trump supporters to flood the phone lines of Senate Republicans, demanding that GOP senators vote for Scott in the leader race.

Alabama Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville, one of the dumbest senators in history and a Scott supporter, said his office "phone has been ringing off the wall” from MAGA faithful who wanted Scott as leader.

But Scott, who was cocky in the run-up to the vote declaring that he was going to win, couldn't translate that into a victory among Senate Republicans. 

Republicans instead chose Sen. John Thune, the South Dakota Republican who currently serves as minority whip.

Thune won on the second ballot over Sen. John Cornyn of Texas by a vote of 29 to 24, Punchbowl News’ John Bresnahan reported.

Of the three men running, Thune has the rockiest relationship with Trump. Thune slammed Trump after the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021—though Thune ultimately voted against convicting Trump in the second impeachment trial for inciting insurrection. 

“What former President Trump did to undermine faith in our election system and disrupt the peaceful transfer of power is inexcusable,” Thune said at the time.

Trump was so angry at him for that remark that Trump called on Thune to face a primary, though he easily beat it back. The Wall Street Journal, however, reported in October that Thune has since been working to mend his relationship with Trump.

MAGA world is already threatening Thune to jump when Trump asks.

Kirk wrote on X: “John Thune is Senate Majority Leader. He has a short window to show us he will support President Trump, fill his cabinet, confirm his judges, and pass his agenda. If he does, we will support him. If he doesn't, we will work to remove him.”

Thune now replaces noxious Kentucky Republican McConnell, who announced in February he was stepping down from his leadership role but not the Senate itself.

McConnell is largely responsible for obliterating norms in Washington. He helped Republicans steal two Supreme Court seats from Democrats as well as a number of other federal judgeships he held vacant when Barack Obama was in office. He also used the filibuster to obstruct at a historic level and squandered the opportunity to rid the country of Trump when he refused to convict him in the Jan. 6 impeachment trial, among other things.

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The race to replace Mitch McConnell is on—and the worst one wins

Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky—who infamously stole two Supreme Court seats and refused to convict Donald Trump after the Jan. 6 insurrection—isn't leaving Congress.

But McConnell won't be Senate majority leader when the new GOP majority is sworn in in January, announcing in February that he was stepping down from the role when the new Congress is sworn in.

Republicans are now jockeying to replace him, with Sens. John Thune of South Dakota, John Cornyn of Texas, and Rick Scott of Florida all running for the role.

And the race is already getting ugly, with Scott working hardest to cozy up to Trump and his vile allies—including racist 9/11 truther Laura Loomer—in an effort to try to come out on top.

“I’m going to win. And here’s why. I’ve been talking to my Republican colleagues, Guess what? They want change. They know that Donald Trump has a mandate. They want to be part of that mandate. They want to be treated as equals. They want to be part of a team. They want to have a working relationship with the House,” he said in an interview with former Trump administration official and current Fox Business host Larry Kudlow on Wednesday.

On Monday, Scott also went on Fox News, saying he will end the “dictatorship” of McConnell’s long tenure as GOP leader.

People across this country are ready for change. As the next Senate Majority Leader, I’ll deliver that change. It’s time to Make Washington WORK! pic.twitter.com/GQsJQrDqNK

— Rick Scott (@ScottforFlorida) November 4, 2024

The Hill reported that Scott is seen as a long shot for the job, and that he could be ousted on the first ballot. Yet, that could change if Trump allies like Loomer are successful at getting Trump to endorse in the race. Scott appeared on Loomer’s podcast in October, after which Loomer endorsed Scott for Senate GOP leader.

“Sadly, there are a few bad people who have been around Donald Trump lately who are giving him terrible advice on who to support in this Senate GOP race so that his entire 2nd term is undermined by people who have always hated him,” Loomer wrote in a post on X, adding that Scott is “a true Trump loyalist and is someone we can trust to support Donald Trump.”  

Republicans have begged Trump to stay out of the race. However, all three candidates have been kissing up to the now president-elect in the lead up to the race, knowing that if Trump endorses it will likely help put that person over the edge.

Scott, who perpetrated one of the largest Medicare frauds in history, ran against McConnell in 2022 and lost, receiving just 10 votes from the GOP conference. But he's seen as the man closest to Trump among the three, and a Trump endorsement could change his fortunes.

Sen. John Thune of South Dakota

Thune, who is seen as the favorite in the race, has a rocky relationship with Trump, as Thune criticized Trump after he incited an insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. 

“What former President Trump did to undermine faith in our election system and disrupt the peaceful transfer of power is inexcusable,” Thune said at the time, even though he voted to acquit Trump in the impeachment trial after the insurrection. 

It led Trump to call for Thune to face a primary in Thune's reelection, though Thune easily beat back the primary opponent and won reelection.

The Wall Street Journal reported in October that Thune has been working to get back in Trump’s good graces. 

Cornyn has also been spending time with Trump during the campaign.

Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, a Thune backer, has publicly called on Trump not to endorse.

“I’d advise him just to stay out of the race,” Mullin told CNN.

But given Trump’s wildcard persona and inability to get over grudges, you never know what will happen.

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McConnell called Trump a stupid narcissist but will vote for him anyway

Proving that a broken clock is right twice a day, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell trashed former President Donald Trump in private following the 2020 election, calling Trump “stupid,” a “narcissist,” and a “despicable human being,” according to a soon-to-be-released biography of the Kentucky Republican.

McConnell’s frank assessments of the leader of the GOP were made in recorded diaries given to Michael Tackett, the Associated Press deputy Washington bureau chief, for his new McConnell biography titled “The Price of Power.” According to publisher Simon & Schuster, it’s based on “thousands of pages of archival materials, letters, and more than 100 interviews with associates, colleagues, and McConnell himself.”

In those diaries, McConnell said “it’s not just the Democrats who are counting the days” until Trump was out of the White House, adding that Trump’s 2020 loss “only underscores the good judgment of the American people.”

"They’ve had just enough of the misrepresentations, the outright lies almost on a daily basis, and they fired him," McConnell said.

Yet despite McConnell’s disdain for Trump, he gave up on the best opportunity to rid his party and the country of the man he called a liar when he voted against convicting Trump for inciting the violent and deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. 

Had McConnell worked to rally the Republican senators he leads to vote to convict Trump on the single impeachment charge of inciting insurrection, Trump could have been barred from running for office again in the future. McConnell’s decision to let Trump slide helped pave the way for Trump to wage his current comeback bid. Trump has vowed to destabilize American democracy by threatening to jail his political enemies and using the military to go after American citizens whom he described as “the enemy from within.” 

What’s more, even though McConnell thinks Trump is “stupid” and a “despicable human being,” he endorsed Trump in his 2024 comeback bid, saying in March: “It is abundantly clear that former President Trump has earned the requisite support of Republican voters to be our nominee for President of the United States. It should come as no surprise that as nominee, he will have my support.”

McConnell endorsed Trump because he is trying to prevent what he called his “worst nightmare” which he described as a Democratic sweep of the White House, the House, and the Senate. 

While McConnell has stuck by Trump, a number of other Republicans have said they won’t be voting for him and instead endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential bid, declaring that they are putting “country over party.”

Those Republicans include: former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter, former Wyoming Rep Liz Cheney; former Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois; former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan; Alberto Gonzales, who served as attorney general in former President George W. Bush’s administration; and former Trump White House aides Cassidy Hutchinson, Stephanie Grisham, and Olivia Troye, among others.

Harris and her campaign have been reaching out to Republicans, hoping that their defections from Trump could be decisive in what’s currently predicted to be a toss-up election in November.

She held a rally on Wednesday in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, with over 100 Republicans who are supporting her campaign. Two of those Republicans, Bob and Kristina Lange, spoke at the event, describing themselves as lifelong Republicans who voted for Trump. 

“Never in a million years did either of us think that we'd be standing here supporting a Democrat. But we've had enough. We've had enough,” Kristina Lange said at the event.

If only McConnell had as much courage as the Langes. 

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There are many reasons to hate Mitch McConnell—here are 5

Mitch McConnell has wreaked destruction during his reign as Senate minority leader, and even though he’s stepping down from that post, he’s still exerting his malign influence. In a sort of exit interview with Punchbowl News, the lame duck leader was at his worst. 

Here are five reasons why he is simply awful. 

1. He believes Supreme Court reform is just like Jan. 6.

McConnell equated President Joe Biden’s moderate plan for Supreme Court reform with the mob that attacked the Capitol to overturn the results of the 2020 election. “That’s what some people were trying to do Jan. 6—to break the system of handing an administration from one to the next,” McConnell told Punchbowl. “We can have our arguments, but we ought to not try to break the rules.”

This is the McConnell who called what happened that day a “violent insurrection.” He said the “unhinged crowd … tried to disrupt our democracy.” And Biden’s idea that the justices have to comply with ethics rules and be subject to term limits is just like that.

2. He blasts Trump’s foreign policy, but still endorses him.

After Jan. 6, McConnell called Trump a “son of a bitch” and told fellow Republicans that the Democrats would take care of him with impeachment. Now he’s endorsing that SOB while at the same time ridiculing Trump’s foreign policy approach as “nonsense. … I mean, even the slogans are what they were in the ‘30s—‘America First.’” 

3. McConnell is betraying Ukraine.

McConnell is still going to the Senate floor on a regular basis to talk about the importance of helping Ukraine and defeating Russia. At the same time he’s backing Trump’s pick of Sen. JD Vance—one of the most vocal pro-Russia, anti-Ukraine senators—to be vice president.

“It’s not my job to tell the president who he ought to run,” McConnell said. “With regard to Sen. Vance … yeah, we have a different point of view.” 

He knows that a Trump/Vance team would hand Ukraine over to the Russians in the guise of a peace settlement, and yet he doesn’t seem to care.

4. He champions flawed and dangerous GOP challengers.

McConnell famously declared that the reason Republicans didn’t take the Senate in 2022 was because of a “candidate quality” problem. Now he’s enthusiastically endorsing a raft of Senate GOP candidates who are a bunch of misogynistic weirdos

McConnell told Punchbowl that the GOP has “fabulous candidates” in Montana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Nevada

5. He puts winning above governing.

“The way you win the argument is to get more people elected,” McConnell said. Even if those people are Trump’s MAGA darlings.

Let’s take this last opportunity to humiliate McConnell with another Senate loss. Help these candidates keep the Senate blue.

11 times Donald Trump escaped justice—until now

Donald Trump is an enigma inside a riddle wrapped in 34 felony convictions, so it’s difficult to work out exactly where he goes from here. Conventional wisdom tells us the presidential campaign of a traitorous Putin sympathizer with this much legal baggage should officially be over, but this is Trump we’re talking about. The dude makes no apologies, has no shame, and continually respawns like a Grand Theft Auto character on a 24-hour killing rampage. 

And since the Republican Party is now basically the Jonestown Cult without the complimentary beverages, few GOP luminaries—including elected officials—will dare gainsay him.

Indeed, in the wake of his conviction, the party of law and order is queuing up to kiss his arse in perpetuity. And Trump himself is trying to divert attention from his own crimes by claiming that New York—and the nation as a whole—is hopelessly steeped in lawlessness because Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is only paying attention to this one case.

(Actually, the crime wave that started under Trump has now ebbed, and crime as a whole is close to a 50-year low—except among former U.S. presidents, of course. Among that admittedly narrow cohort, it’s up approximately 100%.)

Ah, but now is not the time to be complacent. Trump’s goose might look cooked, but one thing we’ve all learned over the years is that no matter how grotesque and silly he might appear at any given moment, he keeps coming back. He’s sort of like Jason Voorhees that way. Or Infrastructure Week.

Indeed, we’ve seen this movie many times, and it’s always set us up for sequels. Which means we’re not done fighting this cancer—not by a long shot.

Here are 11 times it looked like the Trump train had—or should have—officially derailed, only for some weak-kneed enabler (I’m looking at you, Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell) to lift it back onto the tracks and send it on its merry way. (Note: This list is not chronological, and it’s by no means exhaustive.)

1. The “Access Hollywood” tape

For many, this was the first time it looked as though Trump was cooked for sure. You can’t gleefully admit to serial sexual assault and still be elected president, right? Right?! It’s over! Let’s spike the ball right here—on the 10-yard line. What could possibly go wrong now?

Ah, memories. As we now recall, this seismic October surprise was ultimately papered over with the infamous Jim Comey letter, and Trump was elected our 45th—and first future felon—president. 

2. His campaign launch

Many forget that Trump’s campaign stumbled right out of the gate when he infamously declared that Mexican immigrants were criminals and rapists. The remarks were offensive (and false) enough to prompt NBC to sever ties with their star reality show host. Sadly, they weren’t quite offensive enough for Republican primary voters. Indeed, his remarks probably gave him an edge over his opponents, who were still relying on dog whistles as Trump was blithely blowing an airhorn.

3. Mocking a disabled reporter

There have been numerous instances involving Trump saying or doing something so beyond the pale, it felt like no one outside the fringiest of fringes could possibly still support him. And yet they did.

In November 2015, he cruelly mocked reporter Serge Kovaleski, who has arthrogryposis, a condition that “can impact the function and range of motion of joints and can cause muscles to atrophy.” 

It was the ugliest thing most longtime political observers had ever seen, and yet it somehow failed to dissuade millions of Republican primary voters, who proudly nominated him as the Republican presidential candidate in July of the following year.

As long as I live, I will never understand how this alone wasn’t the end of it. pic.twitter.com/2MaLkBJ2Xo

— Damien Owens (@OwensDamien) November 15, 2016

4. Disrespecting Gold Star families and John McCain

In July 2015, Trump downplayed GOP Sen. John McCain’s military service, saying, “He’s not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”

Roughly a year later, he was disrespecting military families again (well, their lost loved ones were suckers and losers, right?). After Gold Star father Khizr Khan, whose son died in the line of duty in Iraq, spoke on Hillary Clinton’s behalf during the 2016 Democratic National Convention, Trump showed once again that he has the impulse control of an Arby’s grease fire.

In an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, Trump first claimed that, contrary to what Khan had said in his address, Trump actually had made sacrifices for his country by employing “thousands and thousands of people.”

Then he attacked Khan’s wife, Ghazala, saying, “If you look at his wife, she was standing there. She had nothing to say. She probably—maybe she wasn't allowed to have anything to say. You tell me."

Oh, boy! He won’t survive this one! He’s like a shark with three barrels stuck in him! It’s over! Right?

5. The Mueller probe

We all thought this investigation would enfeeble Trump beyond hope of recovery, didn’t we? And then Bill Barr happened.

After months of waiting for Special Counsel Robert Mueller to drop his report on Russian election interference, we did get some real answers about the Trump campaign’s extensive contacts with the Russians involved in ratfucking the 2016 presidential election—and we also discovered that Trump had gone out of his way to obstruct the investigation. But Barr furiously spun the report’s findings, and nothing much came of them.

Trump continued to claim his innocence, even after a later Senate investigation definitively proved collusion between Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort and a Russian intelligence officer. But by that time the public had largely moved on.

6. Charlottesville

We all recall when Trump both-sidesed Nazis. Nazis! How the fuck can you both-sides Nazis?!

Well, Trump can—and he did.

“You had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides,” Trump said in the wake of the violent white-ring Charlottesville protests.

Seriously, dude, these are NAZIS! World War II—and pretty much every war movie filmed in its wake—made very clear that these are the bad guys.

Ah, but Trump loves to move the Overton window, and sadly, Nazi apologia was not a bridge too far for the GOP. 

7. Extorting Ukraine/first impeachment

You’d think withholding congressionally approved military funds meant to aid a democratic ally caught in a life-or-death struggle with a hostile authoritarian regime would be enough to get you impeached and convicted. Especially if you were doing it to compel that ally into digging up dirt on your likely future opponent.

You’d think.

Well, you’d be wrong, because … Republicans.

The Government Accountability Office determined that Trump had broken the law in withholding the funds, but that wasn’t nearly enough for the law-and-order party, which continued to pretend Trump was the most brutally persecuted—and unluckiest—human in history.

8. The Helsinki Surrender Summit

If you had any doubts about Trump’s lickspittle obeisance to Russian war criminal Vladimir Putin, they were put to rest after this sorry incident.

At a joint press conference with Putin in July 2018, Trump took the dictator’s word over the findings of our own intelligence agencies (who had determined Russia interfered in our elections).

“[Putin] just said it’s not Russia. I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be,” he said.

For once, Trump’s remarks actually seemed to scandalize stalwart Republicans. As The Associated Press wrote at the time, “The reaction back home was immediate and visceral, among fellow Republicans as well as usual Trump critics. ‘Shameful,’ ‘disgraceful,’ ‘weak,’ were a few of the comments. Makes the U.S. ‘look like a pushover,’ said GOP Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee.”

But, in the end, nothing really changed, as Republican spines dissolved faster than Lindsey Graham’s dignity at the Mar-a-Lago omelet bar

9. Jan. 6 and the Second Impeachment

Okay, he’s really done now, right? Right?

Violently attempting to overthrow the government is so egregious, even Graham dropped the ocher abomination. (Sadly, a little more than a month later, he came groveling back.)

Unfortunately, then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, while clearly upset by Trump’s outrageous attack on democracy, refused to back his conviction, preserving his eligibility for future office. And before the month was over, Rep. Kevin McCarthy—apparently assuming Trump was the ticket to a long and rewarding speakership—helped rehabilitate his image among the “fuck your feelings and our 245-year-old democracy crowd” by hurrying to Mar-a-Lago to sample every square inch of Trump boots.

Thanks, guys!

10. The E. Jean Carroll judgment

Yeah, Trump was found civilly liable for lying about sexually assaulting writer E. Jean Carroll in a department store. And, sure, he’s being forced to cough up $83 million. What of it?

Trump assured us Carroll wasn’t his type, and as we all know, Trump never lies. The fact that he later thought an old picture of her was a photo of his ex-wife Marla Maples is irrelevant, and definitely not something you should spend any time thinking about. Especially if you’re a Republican.

MAGA ‘24, baby!

11. Four—four!—felony cases ... and 4 million Republican yawns

It might seem like a cop-out to shove all of these into one catchall category, but when you really think about it, one felony charge should have been enough. And yet Republicans were able to ignore 91 with unprecedented aplomb.

Besides, two of those four felony cases were related to Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election and install himself as a dictator, and Republicans had already established that they don’t care about such picayune matters.

Also, who doesn’t steal box loads of highly sensitive government secrets and randomly stack them in a heavily trafficked ballroom at a country club? That’s what the U.S. is all about. If they can go after Trump for that, they can go after you for doing the same thing. Think about it. It’s just common sense.

And if it’s this easy to ignore 91 felony charges, ignoring 34 convictions should be a doddle, now shouldn’t it? 

Of course, both President Joe Biden and Trump have stressed that the real verdict will come on Nov. 5. And they’re not wrong.

As we’ve clearly seen, we voters are the only ones who can put an end to this feral fuckery. No doubt y’all are happy about this verdict—I know I am—but there’s “happy” and then there’s “cosmically orgasmic.” We haven’t attained the latter yet—and we won’t until Trump is permanently consigned to the Walmart parking lot dumpster of history.

In other words, now is no time to get cocky. We need to run through the tape all the way through November—which means our work has just started.

We can all do something to help push Biden over the goal line, whether that involves donating or getting out the vote (phone-banking, door-knocking, postcard-writing, talking to friends, etc.). But the last thing we can be is complacent. We all remember how we felt when Clinton lost in 2016—it’s far too early to let our guard down. Too much is at stake.

So by all means, celebrate over the next couple of days, but then get back in the trenches and fight like your life depends on it. Because, you know, it very well might.

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Every day brings a new prognostication that is making President Joe Biden's campaign operatives worry or freak out. Is Donald Trump running away with the election? No. Not even close.