After former president Trump said that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” Mitch McConnell shot back sharply on Tuesday.
The Republican leader, who seldom addresses Trump these days, responded to Trump’s xenophobic statements by bringing up his wife, Elaine Chao, who was born in Taiwan and was Trump’s transportation secretary.
“Well, it seems he didn’t mind when he appointed Elaine Chao secretary of transportation,” he told reporters.
To be more specific, McConnell dodged the issue of whether he was “comfortable with your party’s leading presidential candidate referring to illegal immigrants as ‘poisoning the blood of our country.'”
Since the Capitol uprising on January 6, 2021, and since their last conversation in December 2020, McConnell and Trump have had almost no contact. For a long time now, the former president has demanded that McConnell step down as Republican leader in the Senate.
Though he normally answers with remarkable composure, the Kentucky lawmaker occasionally lashes out at Trump’s insults. Trump claimed that the terrorist organisation Hezbollah is “smart.” McConnell stated in October that he “can’t disagree more” with this statement.
However, McConnell will need to more often counter the divisive comments made by the former president as Trump moves closer to obtaining the GOP nomination for president. On Tuesday, he demonstrated that he is willing to fight back verbally—at least on occasion.