Donald J. Trump and Mitch McConnell have not spoken to each other since December 2020.
But people close to both men are working behind the scenes to overcome the animosity between them and pave the way for critical support of the former president from the highest-ranking Republican holdout yet, three people familiar with both teams say ‘ Perspectives who were not authorized to discuss the situation publicly.
Assuming that happens, Mr. McConnell’s support for Mr. Trump would have enormous symbolic value for the former president, earning him the embrace of the last Republican powerbroker, whose rejection represents the last piece of unconquered territory on Mr. Trump’s march to the presidential nomination of the party for 2024.
The endorsement of Mr. McConnell, the Republican senator from Kentucky and the chamber’s minority leader, would also be valuable, signaling to an entire class of donors and Trump-resistant Republican elites that it is acceptable to rally behind the party’s expected nominees to ask – no matter your concerns. This is no small feat considering that Mr. Trump has already spent more than $50 million on law firms and the groups supporting him are expected to be significantly outspent by President Biden’s operation.
The secret talks between the Trump and McConnell camps took place between key advisers to both men who have known each other and worked together for more than 20 years: Chris LaCivita, a top campaign adviser to Mr. Trump, and Josh Holmes, a confidant and longtime veteran political strategist for Mr. McConnell.
Around the time of the Iowa caucuses last month, Mr. LaCivita and Mr. Holmes made an increasingly concerted effort to share information — particularly about the Senate’s endorsements of Mr. Trump — and create an opportunity for a more productive working relationship.
Both Mr. Trump and Mr. McConnell have been made aware of this back channel between the two camps. In late January, Mr. Trump told those close to him that he expected Mr. McConnell to support him.
Mr. McConnell has always said he will support the Republican Party’s nominee, even when he was specifically pressed on Mr. Trump, whom he called “practically and morally responsible” for provoking the attack on the United States on January 6, 2021 Capitol. But when his likely approval will occur is a matter of debate.
Mr. Trump faces his first criminal trial at the end of March and is eager to consolidate all factions of the party and its donor class behind him as quickly as possible. That would take a long time to secure a nomination at the Republican National Convention in July in Milwaukee.
“President Trump is the presumptive nominee and it is time for the entire party to unite behind him to defeat the ailing Joe Biden,” Trump’s communications director Steven Cheung said in a statement to the New York Times following the private conversations between Mr. LaCivita and Mr. Holmes.
“Senior members of the campaign have had many conversations,” Mr. Cheung added, “but only engage with those who are actually ready to fight for the principles of America First and take back the White House.”
A McConnell spokesman, Doug Andres, declined to comment.
With his primary victory over Nikki Haley in her home state of South Carolina on Saturday, Mr. Trump has now swept all primary voting states by a comfortable margin, and polls show him leading the more than a dozen Super Tuesday contests.
He already has the support of House Speaker Mike Johnson, and on Sunday he was joined by Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, Mr. McConnell’s deputy and No. 2 in the Senate Republican leadership.
Senator Steve Daines of Montana, the chairman of the Republican campaign group in the Senate, has privately encouraged the two camps to reconcile, according to two people familiar with his involvement. Asked about this, Mr. Daines said in a statement: “I encourage the Republican Party to unite behind President Trump. “We must all work together to win the Senate and defeat Joe Biden in November.”
Since the new year, both the Trump and McConnell teams have sought to avoid all-out war. It’s been a while since Mr. Trump demeaned Mr. McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, as “Coco Chow” or Mr. McConnell’s “China-loving wife.” Ms. Chao, who was born in Taiwan, had served in Mr. Trump’s Cabinet as transportation secretary but resigned a day after the attack on the Capitol, calling it “a traumatic and entirely avoidable event.”
When Fox News host Laura Ingraham asked Mr. Trump directly about Mr. McConnell at a town hall last week, Mr. Trump criticized the Senate minority leader, but gently by Mr. Trump’s standards.
“He will probably support me in the end. I don’t know if I can work with him,” Mr. Trump told Ms. Ingraham. “He gave away trillions of dollars that he didn’t have to give away, trillions of dollars. He made it very easy for the Democrats.”
To any normal ear or politician, this would have amounted to a devastating attack. But compared to the things Mr. Trump has previously said about Mr. McConnell — including regular comparisons to feces — those comments were interpreted as jabs by Mr. McConnell’s allies.
Still, in recent weeks, Mr. McConnell has watched as a bipartisan immigration bill he had pushed for failed and as Mr. Trump incited those lawmakers who helped defeat it. Funding Ukraine to fight Russia is a particularly important priority for Mr. McConnell, which he sees as part of his legacy, and he used his capital to push through a national security spending package after the earlier bill failed. But the episode further exposed the sheer nervousness between Mr. McConnell and some of his colleagues.
The relationship between Mr. Trump and Mr. McConnell has never been cordial and probably never will be. They despise each other, and Mr. McConnell was appalled by Mr. Trump’s rise in 2016. But Mr. McConnell is completely practical and put aside his own contempt for Mr. Trump during Mr. Trump’s presidency, and they worked together to pass a major tax cut legislation and the confirmation of a record number of federal judges. McConnell’s greatest achievement was working with Trump to reshape the Supreme Court – confirming three conservative justices who achieved longstanding Republican goals such as overturning Roe v. Wade.
The catastrophic and deadly fallout from the 2020 election destroyed everything that existed in their relationship.
After the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and the defeat of two crucial Senate races in Georgia, which he blamed on the former president’s destructive behavior, McConnell concluded that Trump was a dangerous liability. He told people close to him that he never expected to speak to Mr. Trump again. And he told Senate colleagues that he seriously considered voting to convict Mr. Trump in his second impeachment trial but ultimately decided against it.
On February 13, 2021, Mr. McConnell laid out what amounted to his own impeachment of Mr. Trump in a speech on the Senate floor outlining his decision not to convict on constitutional grounds.
“The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their president,” he said.
Mr. McConnell said that day that he believed the criminal justice system was a more appropriate place to hold Mr. Trump accountable for his actions before Jan. 6 and that Mr. Trump “is still liable for everything he did during his time.” term of office.” Office.” Reading today, this statement seems to be an artifact of a political party that no longer exists.
Two weeks after that speech, in late February 2021, Mr. McConnell predicted on Fox News that the 2024 presidential election cycle would be an “open race.” When the interviewer, Bret Baier, pressed him on whether he would support Mr. Trump if he came back to win the Republican nomination, Mr. McConnell, who at the time thought Mr. Trump was a problem of the past, replied: “The party’s nominee ? Absolutely.”
Whenever Mr. McConnell was privately asked about Mr. Trump in 2021 and 2022, he assured his audience that the best way to deal with the former president was to ignore him rather than attack him directly, as Liz Cheney did .
It was not only a convenient response but, as Mr. McConnell saw it, a politically necessary one. Mr. Trump was still the most popular Republican in the country. And Mr. McConnell led a conference of senators who mostly wanted Mr. Trump to go away but who also knew that their political survival depended on staying on the good side of the party’s angry MAGA base. Public deference to Mr. Trump became the price of keeping their jobs.
As it became clear in recent months that Trump would likely be nominated for the Republican nomination for a third time, McConnell assured his colleagues that he would do whatever it took to unite the party and regain control of the Senate.
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2024-02-27 02:24:20
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