WASHINGTON – Three years ago, donald trump he had few friends in the Senate.
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell declared in a speech that Trump was “practically and morally responsible” for the violent January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol spreading “wild falsehoods” about voter fraud and trying to overturn his re-election defeat.
After the House impeached Trump for his actions, seven Republicans sided with the Democrats and found Trump guilty. He was acquitted, but several Republican senators – even some who still publicly supported him – distanced themselves from the former president. Many were sure that their political future was over.
But it was not. Trump is now the party’s presumptive nominee to challenge President Joe Biden. And on Thursday, he returned to the Capitol meet with Republicans – the first official meetings since his presidency – with the enthusiastic and nearly unanimous support of the Senate GOP conference, including many of the same senators who condemned him for his actions while trying to block the president’s rightful victory Joe Biden. McConnell shook his hand several times and punched him in the face.
Hard feelings and any memories of the violent end of his presidency seemed to have completely disappeared.
“I think that’s in the rearview mirror for most people,” South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said of the 2020 election. “There’s always going to be tension there. But I think most Republicans really see President Trump as the only way to change this country. And they’re excited about the chance.”
The acceptance of the former president by Republican senators comes after years of ups and downs. With a few exceptions, senators have never supported him as consistently or as enthusiastically as their Republican counterparts in the House. But as he runs again, Senate Republicans support Trump more enthusiastically than ever.
The Senate’s zealous support is partly rooted in self-interest.
Republicans have a good chance of winning the Senate majority in November and know that Trump’s support is essential to doing so, especially in solidly Republican states like Ohio and Montana, where Democratic incumbents are struggling to hold on.
And they’re already starting to talk about what they’ll do if Trump wins and they win both chambers of Congress. House Speaker Mike Johnson visited a Senate GOP luncheon on Wednesday to discuss the possibility of tax legislation, among other things, if Republicans gain full control.
“Our ability to obtain a majority in the Senate is intrinsically linked to Trump’s victory,” said the Republican. Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina said after the meeting with Johnson. “So we’re like one team, one vision.”
Texas Sen. John Cornyn, who is running to replace McConnell as leader of the Republican Party when he leaves office in November, said the party faces a “binary choice” between Trump and Biden.
“There is no plan B,” said Cornyn, who called Trump “reckless” after the attack on the Capitol. “I think people know the strengths and weaknesses of both candidates. And for me, I think President Trump is clearly preferable.”
Furthermore, Cornyn added, “his support will be important in many of these states where he is very popular, where we have Senate races.”
This is not the first time that Republicans have returned to support Trump after attempting a clean break.
Arguments and whipping are a familiar pattern. McConnell, for example, fully supported Trump in the days before he was elected in 2016, just weeks after the release of a decade-old tape in which Trump was caught on a hot mic bragging to a celebrity news anchor about grabbing women by the genitalia. . McConnell called Trump’s comments “disgusting and unacceptable under any circumstances.”
Many other Republican senators were cool with Trump during the campaign that year and were outraged by the tape. Utah Sen. Mike Lee, now one of Trump’s most loyal supporters, recorded a video calling for Trump to step aside, saying he was a “distraction from the very principles that will help us win in November.” South Dakota Sen. John Thune, who is also running to replace McConnell, also called on Trump to withdraw from the race. But he later walked back those comments.
After he was elected, Republican senators publicly rallied behind Trump, aligned themselves with him on policy and were elated by his conservative choices for the Supreme Court. Most of them defended him during the tumultuous investigations into his campaign’s ties to Russia and rarely criticized him, for fear of being criticized by the president on social media and facing the wrath of conservative voters.
However, after Trump lost re-election, very few senators supported his false claims of fraud, especially after the courts rejected several lawsuits and the Electoral College certified the votes. Thune and Cornyn criticized his efforts to reverse his defeat in Congress in the days leading up to January 6, with Thune saying he thought the plan would go down “like a shot dog.”
Trump later said on Twitter that Thune was a “RINO,” or Republican in name only, whose “political career (is over)!!!”
And after the violence of January 6, few had nice words to say.
“Don’t count me out,” Graham said hours after Trump supporters violently beat police officers and ransacked the Capitol. “That’s enough.”
But in the weeks, months and years since, most of them have mellowed — especially as several Trump allies were recently elected to the Senate and Trump faced several accusations that Republicans view as politically motivated. Earlier this year, most of the Senate GOP conference had endorsed his third bid for the White House, including McConnell, Thune and Cornyn.
When he was convicted in a secret trial in New York late last month, he had broad and united support from the Senate Republican Party conference.
“Now more than ever, we need to rally behind @realdonaldtrump, take back the White House and Senate, and get this country back on track,” Cornyn said in a statement.
While he struck a positive note at Thursday’s Senate meeting, even praising McConnell at one point, Trump’s rhetoric hasn’t changed much. He still claims the 2020 election was stolen, calls protesters who were arrested for violence on January 6 “hostages” and says he will pardon them, and has consistently criticized the judges overseeing his trials.
Some senators remain skeptical. Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, who voted to convict Trump after January 6, skipped their meeting with Trump. Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, who also voted to convict, and Indiana Sen. Todd Young, who refused to support the former president, attended but did not respond to reporters’ questions afterward.
South Dakota Senator Mike Rounds, whom Trump once called an “idiot” after saying the former president was not re-elected, also attended the meeting and supported him. He said Republicans had a good working relationship with Trump leading up to the 2020 election, but “a lot of us disagree with some of the analysis that has been done.”
Senators will have to “work through this issue,” Rounds said, focusing on where they can agree.
“Let’s focus on what we need to do to fix the economy, bring back a strong defense, try to put out many of the fires that are raging around the world and focus on policy,” he said. .
