Senator Mitch McConnell flatly blamed President Trump on Tuesday for the violent rampage at the Capitol on Jan. 6, saying that the mob that stormed the building had been “fed lies” and “provoked by the president” to carry out its assault.
Mr. McConnell’s remarks, on the eve of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s inauguration, were the clearest signal yet from the most powerful Republican left in Washington that after four years of excusing and enabling Mr. Trump, he has come to regard the departing president as a force who could drag down the party if he is not firmly excised by its leaders.
Mr. McConnell, who is said to privately believe that Mr. Trump committed impeachable offenses, gave no indication of whether he would vote to convict Mr. Trump at his impeachment trial on a single charge of “incitement of insurrection.” But it was a notable condemnation from the senator who will play a leading role in determining whether enough Republicans join Democrats to find the president guilty, allowing them to disqualify him from holding office in the future.
“The mob was fed lies,” Mr. McConnell said on the Senate floor. “They 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.”
In an apparent dig at Mr. Trump, who continues to insist that he won the election, Mr. McConnell, also called Mr. Biden “the people’s clear choice for their 46th president” and promised to “move forward” with the new administration — though only if it extended an arm to Republicans.
The move was undoubtedly a calculated risk for the leader, whose power has derived from party unity and who has benefited unmistakably from Mr. Trump’s tenure, as the president and Senate Republicans locked arms to cut taxes and confirm hundreds of conservative judges. Public opinion polling suggests that a majority of Republican voters believe Mr. Trump’s claims of widespread fraud. And the president, who remains by far the most popular figure in his party, has threatened to unleash revenge against any elected officials who cross him in the form of costly primary challenges that could fester in the years ahead. Many of them are Mr. McConnell’s closest allies.
“The only lies that were fed are that Joe Biden won the election,” Amy Kremer, the leader of the pro-Trump group Women for America First and a leader in the “Stop the Steal” campaign, wrote on Twitter, commenting on video of Mr. McConnell’s speech. She described it with a barnyard epithet. “If you think Pres Trump’s base is going anywhere,” she added, “u are sadly mistaken.”
On Fox News, Sean Hannity dedicated his opening monologue to bashing Mr. McConnell, demanding new Senate Republican leadership. He called Mr. McConnell the “king of establishment Republicans” and accused him of “cowering in fear, wilting under the pressure from the media mob, liberal Democrats and big tech companies” rather than fighting for Mr. Trump’s agenda.
Some of Mr. McConnell’s colleagues pushed back more gently, but their words underscored the significant break within the remarkably cohesive Republican ranks.
Source : New York Times
