![]() ![]() ![]() The grey-haired veteran politician shrugged off the criticism calling Trump a "new president" who "has not been in this line of work before." Two years ago, when the Senate failed to repeal Obamacare, Trump aimed a barrage of insulting tweets at McConnell and questioned whether he should remain in the Senate leadership post he obtained in 2014. McConnell, the patient and skilled backroom negotiator whose recently published memoir is titled "The Long Game," and the voluble Trump got off to a rocky start. McConnell sells "Grim Reaper" T-shirts on his campaign website describing himself as "the guy who is going to make sure that socialism doesn't land on the president's desk." "Think of me as the Grim Reaper," he once said, smiling slyly beneath his round, wire-rimmed glasses. McConnell has been equally ruthless when it comes to Democratic legislation making its way from the House to the Senate, where Republicans hold 53 seats to the Democrat's 47. The Supreme Court vacancy was eventually filled by Trump, who appointed a conservative judge, Neil Gorsuch, to the seat. McConnell brazenly refused to hold Senate hearings or a vote to confirm Obama's choice, earning him the everlasting fury of many Democrats. It was a court appointment that perhaps more than anything else earned McConnell his reputation as a hardnosed political operator and a master of the Senate chess game.įollowing the February 2016 death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, McConnell blocked the appointment of Scalia's successor by then-President Barack Obama on the grounds it was an election year. Where the pair find common cause is on advancing a conservative agenda, notably by packing the courts with judges who share their philosophy.Īppointing scores of conservative judges is "the most long-lasting contribution that Donald Trump and Senate Republicans have made for the country," McConnell told Fox News recently. While Trump is a fast-talking New Yorker born of privilege, the low-key McConnell suffered from polio as a child, chooses his words carefully and delivers them in the slow, southern drawl of his native Alabama. Trump, a brash political neophyte, and McConnell, who was first elected to the Senate in 1984, come from vastly different backgrounds and have not always been on the same page. The wily six-term senator from Kentucky now holds the fate of a Republican in his hands - that of President Donald Trump, no less.Īlthough Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts will preside over Trump's impeachment trial in the Senate, it will be the 77-year-old Majority Leader who actually calls the shots. Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader of the US Senate, takes pride in calling himself the "Grim Reaper," doling out death to the hopes of Democratic lawmakers. ![]()
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