TRUMP-MCCONNELL FEUD SQUASHES GOP BID TO REGAIN POWER

Former President Donald Trump is escalating a political war within his own party that could undermine the Republican push to fight President Joe Biden’s agenda and ultimately return to power, Steve Peoples, Jill Colvin and Brian Slodysko reported for the Associated Press (AP).

A day after blistering Mitch McConnell, the Senate’s top Republican, as a “dour, sullen and unsmiling political hack,” Trump repeated his baseless claim on Wednesday that he was the rightful winner of the November election in a series of interviews with conservative outlets after nearly a month of self-imposed silence.

Trump also continued to attack McConnell, accusing the Senate GOP leader of failing to stand up for Republicans after McConnell blasted Trump for inciting the Jan. 6 Capitol riot despite voting to acquit the former president at his second impeachment trial. “The Republicans are soft.

They only hit their own, like Mitch,” Trump complained on Newsmax. “If they spent the same time hitting (Senate Democratic leader Chuck) Schumer and (President Joe) Biden, the Republicans would be much better off, that I can tell you.”

Republican officials in several battlegrounds carried by Biden, including Georgia and Arizona, have said the vote was fair.

Trump’s legal claims surrounding the vote were rejected by judges across the political spectrum, including many appointed by the former president. McConnell himself described Trump’s contention as an “unhinged falsehood.”

Leading GOP strategists described the exploding feud between the former Republican president and the Senate’s most powerful Republican as, at best, a distraction and, at worst, a direct threat to the party’s path to the House and Senate majorities in next year’s midterms.

“I don’t think he cares about winning,” Steven Law, a McConnell ally who leads the most powerful Republican-aligned super PAC in Washington, said of Trump. “He just wants it to be about himself.”

He said Trump lost in states where the GOP must win next year, saying Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin could be lost, along with Nevada and New Hampshire, as well as North Carolina, where Trump barely won. If Trump tries to make himself “the center of attention,” Law said, “that actually could cost Republicans seats in the general election.”

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