Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell does not see how President Donald Trump will be able to salvage his presidency, The New York Times reports.
The Senate majority leader and the president have reportedly not spoken in weeks. McConnell has expressed uncertainty as to where the Trump presidency stands at the moment, and he does not see how Trump can lead Republicans through the 2018 congressional election cycle, let alone the remainder of his first term in office, according to TheNYT.
The rift between the two Republican leaders may not come as a shock given the pair’s recent back and forth regarding health care reform and the Charlottesville protests.
The president blamed McConnell for Republican’s failure to pass a bill to repeal and replace Obamacare in late July, which ended in a contentious 51-49 vote on the Senate floor. Trump reportedly ripped into McConnell on a phone call Aug. 9, accusing him of messing up the Republican push to repeal Obamacare. Trump also ribbed McConnell on Twitter for the health care debacle.
For his part, McConnell has hit back at Trump. The Senate majority leader was upset with the president over how he handled the response to the protests in Charlottesville, Va.
Trump faced an onslaught of negative press and attacks from congressional Republicans, who said the president did not do enough to specifically call out the perpetrators of the Charlottesville protests in early August. The president said in the wake of the protests that he condemned violence on “many sides,” but he failed to call out white supremacist groups specifically.
Trump reiterated his comments, later saying that he thinks there is “blame on both sides.”
McConnell responded to the president’s statements, fully condemning all acts of violence committed in Charlottesville and denouncing white supremacists and racist groups by name.
“The white supremacist, KKK, and neo-Nazi groups who brought hatred and violence to Charlottesville are now planning a rally in Lexington. Their messages of hate and bigotry are not welcome in Kentucky and should not be welcome anywhere in America,” McConnell said in a statement given to The Daily Caller News Foundation.
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