Mitch McConnell damns Republican party for excusing Capitol riot

In a worsening feud with Trump loyalists, the leading Republican condemned the attack as a “violent insurrection”.

Leading Republican Mitch McConnell has lashed his own party over their response to the Capitol riots. Picture: Getty Images.

The leading Republican Mitch McConnell has lashed out at his own party for declaring the Capitol riot “legitimate political discourse”.

In a worsening feud with Trump loyalists, he condemned the attack as a “violent insurrection”.

Amid talk of “civil war” between party centrists and an extremist wing still in thrall to the former president, McConnell, the Senate minority leader, added his name to the list of senior members trying to break away from Donald Trump and his false claims that he won the 2020 election.

“We all were here. We saw what happened,” McConnell said of the attack on January 6 last year. “It was a violent insurrection for the purpose of trying to prevent the peaceful transfer of power after a legitimately certified election from one administration to the next.”

Trump duly fired back at McConnell in a statement yesterday. “Mitch McConnell does not speak for the Republican Party, and does not represent the views of the vast majority of its voters. He did nothing to fight for his constituents and stop the most fraudulent election in American history. And he does nothing to stop the lawless Biden administration,” he said.

McConnell’s comments follow the move by the Republican national committee (RNC) on Friday to censure two of the party’s own representatives, Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, for working with the congressional committee investigating the attack. Forced through by pro-Trump members, the resolution accused the two fellow Republicans of “persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse”.

The motion, which did not distinguish between peaceful protesters and the hundreds who attacked police and rampaged through the Capitol, has provoked uproar among Republicans as the rift widens with Trump and his loyalists in the party.

Trump, who continues to rail at the party for failing to overturn the 2020 election result, caused further outrage when he said last week that he would consider pardoning those jailed for the violence if he retook the White House in 2024.

Trump’s hold over the party and its support base has empowered loyalists in Congress to demand total allegiance to the former president as they try to discredit the investigation into the riot. The inquiry has closed in on Trump and his inner circle in recent weeks, raising the possibility of a criminal indictment against him over allegations that he incited the attack and then refused to try to stop it.

This week the Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has ties to the QAnon conspiracy movement and is the most strident of the Trump loyalists, called openly for rebellion in the party.

“No one likes to watch people fighting … but if we are truly going to stop the assault on our freedoms and stop what’s happening to our country … we have to lean into this civil war in the [party],” she told The Washington Times.

McConnell, 79, the chief Republican strategist, had a fractious relationship with Trump in office but helped to acquit him when he was impeached for inciting the riot last year. With Trump refusing to leave the stage, however, McConnell and other Republican leaders have been infuriated as they try to refocus the party on the midterm elections in November.

McConnell’s comments echoed those of Mike Pence, the former vice-president, who has been pilloried by Trump on the grounds that he refused to block the certification of the election on January 6, an action that was not within Pence’s power.

After another barrage last week, Pence said: “President Trump is wrong. I had no right to overturn the election.”

Other Republican grandees have also been appalled at the RNC resolution. Mitt Romney, a senator who described the motion as shameful, said this week: “Anything that my party does that comes across as being stupid is not going to help us.”

Trump is accused of inciting the riot with a speech and then refusing to act for hours as the violence escalated.

The Times