Mitch McConnell endorses Donald Trump for president
FILE-President Donald Trump (L) introduces Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) during a "Make America Great Again" rally at the Eastern Kentucky University, in Richmond, Kentucky, on October 13, 2018. (Photo by NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP via Getty I
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell is endorsing Donald Trump for president in 2024.
McConnell announced his support for the Republican frontrunner in a short statement after Super Tuesday wins nudged Trump closer to the party nomination, the Associated Press reported.
"It is abundantly clear that former President Trump has earned the requisite support of Republican voters to be our nominee for President of the United States," McConnell said in the statement.
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McConnell’s endorsement of Trump comes after he previously blamed the former president for his "disgraceful" acts in the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.
Both men had not spoken since 2020, when McConnell declared Democrat Joe Biden the winner of that year’s presidential election.
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Trump routinely bashed McConnell publicly, and hurled racist insults at the senator’s wife, Elaine Chao, who was the former president’s Transportation Secretary and stepped down in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 attack — which McConnell termed an insurrection, the AP noted.
Despite his condemnation of Trump, McConnell refused to convict him in a Senate trial on House impeachment charges of inciting an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. A conviction of Trump could have made him ineligible to serve again as president.
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Trump was indicted on federal charges of conspiring to defraud Americans and obstruct an official proceeding in his efforts to overturn Biden’s victory and the Jan. 6 attack and claimed immunity in a challenge that is now before the Supreme Court, the AP reported.
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The Associated Press contributed to this report. This story was reported from Washington, D.C.