Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) says Joe Biden is a “good guy,” breaking with former President Trump’s repeated efforts to villainize the president as the corrupt mastermind behind schemes to steal elections and persecute political opponents.
But McConnell, who supported Trump, says there are many compelling political reasons to remove Biden from office and has laid out a script for Trump to use in Thursday’s debate and on the campaign trail to attack Biden’s record in office.
“I know Joe Biden very well. He’s a nice guy; I like him personally,” McConnell said at a hearing in Louisville on Tuesday, referring to the more than 20 years they spent together in the Senate and the agreements they worked on when Biden was vice president.
Still, McConnell said he is not a fan of Biden’s record and never believed in the president’s efforts to present himself in 2020 as a moderate who would govern from the center.
“I never thought he would be a moderate in the Senate, but he ran as a moderate,” he said. “But as soon as the president was elected, he pretty much aligned himself with the far left of the Democratic Party, which created another set of problems for all of you in business.
“This has been a regulatory nightmare for this administration,” he argued.
McConnell has made clear that he thinks there are strong arguments against Biden’s re-election without implementing the policy of personal destruction, which Trump has frequently used against Biden with limited success.
Trump regularly calls the president “Crooked Joe” and has accused him of all sorts of crimes and underhanded behavior, from stealing the 2020 election to corrupt business dealings and using drugs to pump himself up before the State of the Union address.
Trump called Biden a “cold thief,” a “stupid son of ab-‑‑‑,” a “mental catastrophe,” and even mocked the president’s stutter.
And he hinted that he will hurl more personal invective at his opponent in Thursday’s presidential debate in Atlanta, asking a crowd of supporters at a recent rally: “Should I be tough and nasty and just say, ‘You’re the worst president. of history? ‘? Or should I be gentle and calm and let him talk?”
Al Cross, director emeritus of the University of Kentucky’s Institute for Rural Journalism and a longtime McConnell watcher, said the Senate GOP leader may be sending a message to moderate Republicans who aren’t fans of Trump that they should step up. focus on political differences. between the candidates rather than their personalities.
“What McConnell may be trying to do here is appeal to Republicans who really don’t like Trump — just as he really doesn’t like Trump — but perhaps aren’t entirely focused on the policy differences and would be more inclined to vote for it. Trump, given that stark contrast,” Cross said.
The Kentucky senator, who is a skilled debater in his own right, argues that Biden can be taken down by focusing on his management of the economy and inflation, and his failure to stop the massive surge of migrants across the southern border.
McConnell highlighted that former Clinton-era Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers warned Biden in May 2021 that “we are taking very substantial risks on the inflation side” and advised pumping the brakes on fiscal stimulus to prevent prices from rising.
“The president was asking for an enormous amount of money, far beyond what most of us thought made sense,” McConnell said of Biden’s Build Back Better agenda after taking office.
“Summers… said at the time, ‘If you do that, you’ll have 40 years’ worth of inflation.’ They did it, and we do it,” said the Republican Party leader. “It is easy to start inflation and very difficult to turn it off.”
And McConnell said Biden’s second big political responsibility is his record on the border.
“The Biden administration’s second big unforced error and the reason the president is in such a difficult situation politically was because of an issue at the southern border,” he said. “There was clearly a change of direction from the day the president took office, and you see the result.”
The Department of Homeland Security recorded more than 6.3 million migrant encounters at the southern border between Biden’s inauguration and the beginning of this year. This included 300,000 unaccompanied children who were allowed into the country and placed with sponsors.
“If Joe Biden is defeated this fall, I think the main reason that will happen will be two unforced errors: one, the $2.6 trillion that created inflation, and the other, basically, the opening of the border,” he said. McConnell.
Cross highlighted that McConnell has always been open about his personal regard for Biden, despite their major policy disagreements.
“He has always criticized his policies and praised him personally,” he said.
McConnell and Trump fell out in December 2020 after McConnell congratulated Biden on winning the election despite Trump insisting, without evidence, that the results had been tainted by widespread fraud.
McConnell waited until the Electoral College vote before recognizing Biden as the president-elect.
Biden and McConnell worked together to close several important deals during the Obama administration, when Biden served as vice president.
They famously reached the deal to make 98 percent of the Bush-era tax cuts permanent and to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff that threatened to send the economy into freefall in late 2012.
They also collaborated on an agreement to raise the debt ceiling and avoid a potential federal default in the summer of 2011, and to extend the expiring Bush tax cuts for two years after the 2010 midterm elections.
More recently, McConnell has supported several of Biden’s high-profile legislative achievements, such as the bipartisan $1 trillion infrastructure package passed by Congress in 2021 and a major investment in the domestic semiconductor manufacturing industry in 2022.
McConnell told his voters in Kentucky this week that Americans have historically liked divided control of government but also expect lawmakers to work across party lines to get things done.
“We have divided government more frequently since World War II,” he noted. “The American people don’t love either side and that’s why they divide the government. And I think it’s not a decision to do nothing, but a decision to look for things that you can agree on and do them.
“My biggest critics these days [say] that I occasionally made deals with the other side,” he added.
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
