I think Trump was the biggest factor in changing the Republican Party from what Ronald Reagan viewed and he wouldn’t recognize today,” McConnell told the Associated Press’ Michael Tackett for the upcoming biography “The Price of Power” obtained by CNN ahead of its release.
McConnell added that the former president has “done a lot of damage to our party’s image and our ability to compete.”
“Trump is appealing to people who haven’t been as successful as other people and providing an excuse for that, that these more successful people have somehow been cheated, and you don’t deserve to think of yourself as less successful because things haven’t been fair,” he said.
“Unfortunately, about half the Republicans in the country believe whatever he says,” McConnell said at the time, adding to an oral historian, “I think I’m pretty safe in saying it’s not just the Democrats who are counting the days until he leaves on January 20, but the Republicans as well.” McConnell gave Tackett access to his personal archive, including an oral history he has been recording since 1995, for the book.
“I’m not at all conflicted about whether what the president did is an impeachable offense. I think it is. Urging an insurrection and people attacking the Capitol as a direct result … is about as close to an impeachable offense as you can imagine, with the possible exception of maybe being an agent for another country,” said McConnell.
“I don’t know whether you can make a conclusive argument that he’s directly responsible for them storming the Capitol, but I think it’s not in dispute that those folks would not have been here in the first place if he had not asked them to come and to disrupt the actual acceptance of the outcome of the election,” the Senate GOP leader said.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/23/politics/mcconnell-trump-gop-new-book/index.html
