Tag: Mitch McConnell

Majority Leader Admits ‘Coordinating’ With White House On Senate Trial

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell admitted Thursday night that he was “coordinating” defense strategies with the White House ahead of Donald Trump’s Senate impeachment trial.

“Everything I do during this [trial preparation], I’m coordinating with White House counsel,” McConnell told Fox News host Sean Hannity.

“There will be no difference between the president’s position and our position as to how to handle this, to the extent that we can,” he added.

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NOTE:  We note again that the Majority Leader will be the Jury Foreman for the impeachment trail. So, the person responsible for impartial review and deliberation is coordinating with the defendant’s legal team. 

McConnell indicates he’ll let Trump’s lawyers dictate Trump’s impeachment trial

Washington Post logoAs soon as the House votes to impeach President Trump — which is likely to happen next week — it is no longer in charge of the process. The situation then goes over to the Republican-controlled Senate, where Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. will preside but the GOP otherwise can control much of the length and substance of the process.

And Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is indicating he’ll endeavor to give the White House whatever kind of trial it wants.

Appearing on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show on Thursday night, McConnell made a point of saying that he would be coordinating with White House counsel Pat Cipollone every step of the way.

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Republicans fear Trump’s plan for a Senate trial would be ‘mutually assured destruction’: report

AlterNet logoSenate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell opposes the idea of calling witnesses during the likely trial on the impeachment articles of President Donald Trump, a new report from the Washington Post revealed on Wednesday.

Though the articles have not officially passed in the House of Representatives, the Senate is expecting to hold the trial in January.

In theory, the trial could give Trump what he desperately wants: a spectacular, fervent defense of his conduct and an opportunity to attack his perceived enemies. What would this mean in practice? He’d love to call witnesses like Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, former Vice President Joe Biden, and Hunter Biden. None of them have anything relevant to add about the nature of Trump’s conduct — they weren’t witnesses to the events at issue in the impeachment articles — but they would let the president distract from his own wrongdoing and smear the Democrats.

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Democrats seek leverage for Trump impeachment trial

The Hill logoSenate Democrats are quietly talking about asking Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to hold articles of impeachment in the House until Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) agrees to a fair rules package for a Senate trial.

Democratic senators are concerned by talk among Senate Republicans of holding a speedy trial without witnesses, which would set up a shorter time frame than when the Senate considered President Clinton’s 1999 impeachment.

They want to hear from Trump’s advisers and worry that if they don’t use their leverage now, they’ll have little say over how a Senate trial is run.

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Republicans embrace strategy of trying to gaslight the nation instead of legislating

AlterNet logoRepublicans are trying out the old idea that if you repeat a lie enough times, it becomes conventional wisdom. From Donald Trump down to Moscow Mitch McConnell, the story they’re running with is the “do nothing” House.

As The Washington Post notes, Trump has used the phrase six times on Twitter since Monday. McConnell has played along, complaining that in her “rushed & partisan impeachment process,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said “Not one word on the outstanding legislation the American people actually need. Nothing on the USMCA, or the NDAA, or funding for our armed forces.” That’s blatantly not true, as Pelosi has been involved in negotiations with the White House for weeks on the USMCA trade proposal. And the House appropriators—who have already completed 10 of 12 appropriations bills—have been working for weeks with Senate appropriators to complete the spending bills that will keep government running past the next deadline of Dec. 20.

Not to mention the literally hundreds of bills the House has passed that McConnell has refused to bring to the Senate floor. That includes gun safety legislation. It includes legislation to protect the next election from malign foreign interference. It includes legislation to protect insurance coverage for people with pre-existing health conditions. It includes legislation to try to stem the acceleration of climate change. The House has been passing literally life-and-death issue bills. The Post counted up: The House has passed 542 total measures, 389 of which are bills as opposed to resolutions (such as naming post offices). The Senate in total has only passed 384 measures—bills and resolutions—and just 91 bills.

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McConnell once called Biden ‘a real friend’ and a ‘trusted partner.’ Now he’s quiet as Trump, GOP attack him.

Washington Post logoThree years ago, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell paid tribute to a former colleague in the most personal of ways. Leading off tributes from the Senate floor, the Kentucky Republican hailed the honoree’s rise from “unknowing despair” to forge “unlikely friendships” and whose word was so good you could “trust him implicitly.”

Finally, McConnell looked up at the Senate’s presiding officer, growing slightly emotional. “You’ve been a real friend, you’ve been a trusted partner, and it’s been an honor to serve with you,” McConnell told Joe Biden, then serving out his final weeks as vice president, on Dec. 7, 2016. “We’re all going to miss you.”

Now, McConnell has remained conspicuously quiet as three Senate committee chairmen have begun two separate probes into his onetime “trusted partner.”

View the complete November 30 article by Paul Kane on The Washington Post website here.

Why Republicans Will Sidestep Their Garland Rule for the Court in 2020

New York Times logoJustice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s health scare raised the question of how the Senate would handle a Supreme Court vacancy in a presidential election year.

WASHINGTON — When Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was released from the hospital last weekend after another in a string of health scares, blue America breathed a sigh of relief. Only one more month, many whispered, until the start of a presidential election year when filling a vacancy on the Supreme Court would be off limits in the Senate.

But would it?

That was the case in 2016 when Senate Republicans stonewalledPresident Barack Obama’s nomination of Judge Merrick B. Garland to fill an opening that occurred with 11 months left in Mr. Obama’s tenure. “Let the people decide,” was the Republican mantra at the time, as they argued that it was improper to consider Mr. Obama’s nominee when voters were only months away from electing a new president who should get the opportunity to make his or her own choice on a Supreme Court justice.

View the complete November 29 article by Carl Hulse on The New York Times website here.

Tensions rise in Senate’s legislative ‘graveyard’

The Hill logoLong-simmering tensions about the slow pace of legislation are boiling over in the Senate.

Senators are lashing out at each other in an increasingly public blame game about who is responsible for the chamber’s legislative agenda, which has largely ground to a halt this year.

The Senate is in its third week of voting only on nominations, though they’ll need to pass a stopgap spending bill before leaving for the weeklong Thanksgiving break.

View the complete November 20 article by Jordain Carney on The Hill website here.

Mitch McConnell Piously Urges ‘Civility’ In Politics

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell called for “civility” on Monday after his reelection campaign publicly mused about the death of one of his rivals.

McConnell told Kentucky residents in a speech that America has a “behavioral problem” adding, “People are acting out and it’s not, I don’t think, limited to one ideological place or another. You’ve just got a lot of people engaging in bad behavior.”

Americans have to “learn how to behave better, how to be able to disagree without anger,” he said.

View the complete November 19 article by Oliver Willis on the National Memo website here.