In Stimulus Battle, Donald Trump Was No Match For Mitch McConnell, Who Shaped His Presidency
President Donald Trump will be leaving Washington soon, but the most powerful Republican of the past four years isn't going anywhere. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, says a former member of the White House staff who advised Trump throughout the first three turbulent years in office, "was sort of Trump's 'Washington whisperer.' He offered quiet advice, and provided critical help on some very big stuff," says the former staffer, who requested anonymity in order to talk candidly. ''You could call him kind of a co-president."
Much of Trump's legacy, when it comes to domestic policy at least, will be fleeting. Many of his signature initiatives—building a wall at the Mexican border, restricting immigration, and implementing broad economic deregulation—were enacted by executive order, and much of it will be swept aside by his successor. The transformative parts of Trump's domestic record are largely McConnell's work. The Senate majority leader took the political neophyte under his wing when he arrived in Washington four years ago, played a central role in his most important achievements, and is now at odds with Trump in his final days in office.
The Senate majority leader's achievements include the appointment of three conservative Supreme Court justices—made possible before the confirmation of Neil Gorsuch by the majority leader's implementation of the so called "nuclear option," the elimination of the 60-vote requirement to end a filibuster for nominees to the high court. It also includes the appointment of 224 federal judges nationwide. (Since 1976 only Ronald Reagan, who served two terms, appointed more.) McConnell got the 2017 tax bill passed narrowly in the Senate, which Trump supporters credit with powering a strong economy that, they believe, would have led to his re-election were it not for the Covid-19 pandemic. And he agreed, somewhat reluctantly, to bring Trump's criminal justice reform bill to a vote in late 2017, where it passed overwhelmingly. McConnell's only major failure came when the late Arizona Senator John McCain scuttled a bill that would have repealed Obamacare, a central Trump campaign promise in 2016.
The last big battle of Trump's term, over the stimulus bill this week, highlighted the extent to which the president was no match for his own enforcer. Trump was already angry with McConnell before they clashed over the additional $1,400 in relief which Trump suddenly supported on December 22. A week earlier, McConnell had publicly congratulated Joe Biden on winning the presidency. That, White House aides and Trump friends say, angered the president; he saw it as an act of "disloyalty"—the cardinal sin in Trump world.
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