Mitch McConnell's Home State Newspaper Attacks Him Over Trump

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican from Kentucky, was slammed in his home state newspaper for failing the country by not standing up to former President Donald Trump.

McConnell, 81, is the longest-serving Senate party leader in U.S. history. He first took his Senate seat in 1985 and has been re-elected 19 times. While McConnell has been praised for his work as a conservative in Congress, he has also been criticized for not standing up to Trump during crucial moments like in the wake of the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021.

John David Dyche, a Louisville attorney who wrote a political biography of McConnell titled Republican Leader, wrote in an opinion piece for the Lexington-Herald Leader published Wednesday that "McConnell has failed our country at its moment of maximum peril."

He prefaced by saying, "I like Sen. McConnell personally and have profound respect for his once brilliant, if always Machiavellian, political mind and skills."

Dyche said he was even asked by a national media organization to write an obituary for McConnell that would be published when he died, but the biographer said in "fairness and good taste" that he would comment on McConnell's political career while he is alive.

Newsweek reached out to McConnell's office via email for comment on Wednesday.

Dyche wrote about how McConnell didn't think Trump would win the 2016 election against Democratic rival Hillary Clinton and when he did, McConnell "hoped he could both manipulate and use Trump."

"[McConnell] was right to some extent, but dangerously wrong to a much more significant one," Dyche said.

The biographer credited McConnell for using Trump and "ruthless partisan political maneuvering" to pack the Supreme Court with conservative justices. Trump appointed three judges during his tenure as president: Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett.

Dyche argued that while this was an "ideological and personal victory" for the senator, this created "long-term damage to the credibility and public perception of the Supreme Court as a judicial, rather than political, body..."

He also brought up McConnell's actions following the riot at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, when Trump's supporters stormed the building to stop the certification of Joe Biden's 2020 presidential election win.

"Underestimating Trump again, McConnell believed this previously unthinkable assault on the American seat of government by domestic terrorists spelled Trump's political end," Dyche wrote. "Thus mistaken, McConnell neither pushed for Trump's immediate impeachment nor voted to convict him after the later trial."

Trump was impeached days after the Capitol riot for incitement of insurrection in a 232-197 House vote. He was later acquitted by the Senate in a 57-43 vote, which fell 10 votes short of the two-thirds majority needed to convict the former president.

Trump has denied any responsibility for the riot.

Despite McConnell saying that Trump's actions surrounding January 6 were "a disgraceful dereliction of duty" and that he was "practically and morally responsible" for the Capitol riot, the senator later said that he would "absolutely" support Trump if he were the 2024 Republican nominee.

The former president is currently the GOP frontrunner in the presidential race.

"When we needed him to courageously be a Republican leader, he instead fixed his legendary focus on merely retaining the title," Dyche said of McConnell. "He has not even pretended to be a truly national leader. When the time for a McConnell obituary comes, that will be his legacy."

Dyche said he had no further comment when contacted by Newsweek.