September 29, 2016 | No Comments
Mitch McConnell’s pre-election victory lap hit a speed bump on Thursday: Donald Trump.
As the majority leader lauded his party’s drama-free management of the Senate, including this week’s tidy negotiations to keep the government open through December, his last press conference before the election veered off course when Trump came up. While the Kentucky Republican argued that his party should be returned to power in November, he refused to say how Trump will affect Senate races or address Trump’s recent conduct.
“Look, to avoid wasting our time here this is not something I’m going to discuss today, the implications of the presidential race on the Senate,” McConnell said on Thursday.
McConnell has essentially refused to discuss Trump since a summertime media tour promoting his new book, in which he chastised Trump for being too spontaneous and undisciplined. On Sunday, McConnell’s wife Elaine Chao was named a member of Trump’s Asian Pacific American Advisory Committee, but even that link with Trump didn’t loosen McConnell’s tongue.
Asked how one of the Republican Party’s most prominent leaders can avoid discussing his party’s nominee while the GOP links Democrats to Hillary Clinton, McConnell answered: “Because I choose not to.”
“Look, we’re in here to talk about — at least I’m here to talk about — the United States Senate, what this majority has done,” McConnell said at his press conference.
Republicans had bucked up earlier this month as Trump appeared on message in the run-up to the first presidential debate. But these days fewer and fewer GOP senators are willing to discuss Trump. Several say privately they are ready for the election to be over so their party can move on from the nominee’s penchant for controversy, whether it’s hinting at President Bill Clinton’s affairs or criticizing the weight of a former Miss Universe in the past week.
“I’ve done my best to try to stay out of the middle of the presidential campaign because I’m focused like a laser on the senate. So I’m going to try to continue that effort,” said McConnell’s chief deputy, No. 2 Sen. John Cornyn of Texas. Two weeks ago he said Trump had improved “his game.”
“Let him run the campaign the way he needs to. He beat me, so I’ll just leave that up to him,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who said earlier this month that Trump was beginning to realize the “big picture” of how his behavior affects other Republicans’ electoral hopes.
And Democrats, of course have amped up their attacks on Trump ahead of their pre-election recess. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Wednesday that Trump was the GOP’s “Frankenstein,” following up on his allegation that Trump is a “racist” earlier this week. He dismissed the fact that GOP incumbents are outpolling Trump as Republican “happy talk.”
New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, who will assume the Democratic leader’s job when Reid retires, wouldn’t go that far but said Trump is “is far too tolerant and accepting of support from racists.” Schumer also predicted Democrats would take the majority in November.
McConnell said that little has changed in the Senate’s electoral forecasts, and in his typically reserved style made no predictions.
“During the [summer] recess I used the word ‘dicey.’ I thought I’d been saying pretty much the same thing for two years,” McConnell said. The Senate races, he added, are “sort of like a knife-fight in a phone booth.”
The majority leader has no big plans to put new trade deals, criminal justice reform or Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland up for a vote, either in the lame duck or next year. All he would divulge about the Senate’s immediate future was that he hoped to fund the government after the election in a series of bite-sized bills and pass the “21st Century Cures Act,” which is aimed at improving medical innovation.
And in the meantime, McConnell plans to avoid the topic of Trump and make his best case that Republicans still deserve to run the Senate and continue an effort “to achieve things at a time of divided government rather than just pointing the finger all the time.”
Seung Min Kim contributed to this report.