Former President Donald Trump lashed out at Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Friday night after the Kentucky Republican declined to take Trump’s advice to use the federal debt ceiling as leverage against President Biden’s social spending plans.
McConnell instead brokered a bipartisan compromise where Republican senators would get out of the way and allow Democrats to raise the debt ceiling with a bare majority to avert a federal default around Dec. 15.
“Mitch McConnell, the Broken Old Crow, has just conceded, for absolutely nothing and for no reason, the powerful Debt Ceiling negotiating block, which was the Republicans’ first-class ticket for victory over the Democrats,” Trump said in an emailed statement.
“He was afraid to play that card even though, without question, they would have completely FOLDED on the Build Back Worse Bill, which will destroy the fabric of our Country and virtually anything else that the Republicans wanted.”
Although they worked closely together for four years, Trump has attacked McConnell repeatedly since the conclusion of his second impeachment trial for allegedly inciting the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, which disrupted certification of Biden’s victory in the Electoral College.
McConnell stoked Trump’s rage by voting to acquit him before delivering a scorching speech in which he said, “The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their president and having that belief was a foreseeable consequence of the growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories and reckless hyperbole, which the defeated president kept shouting into the largest megaphone on planet Earth.”
Trump recently adopted the nickname “Broken Old Crow” for McConnell.
McConnell allowed Democrats to raise the debt ceiling by a bare majority in the evenly divided Senate — but only one time — as a way to allow Republicans to avoid the pain of increasing the national debt when they oppose Biden’s policies.
Congress has always voted to increase the debt ceiling because a US default would unleash economic turmoil. But Trump and allies argued that Republicans could slow the path forward for Biden’s $2.2 trillion social and environmental spending bill, which would cost about $4.5 trillion if its programs are extended over 10 years.
The qualms of centrist Democrats citing high inflation, including Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WVa.), already slowed Biden’s ambitious legislation.
“The Old Crow also allowed a breaking up of the filibuster, which allows the Democrats now to establish precedent for changing the number of Justices on the Supreme Court and, perhaps most importantly of all, a so-called Voting Rights Bill, which will make it almost impossible for Republicans to get elected in the future,” Trump claimed.
Trump added: “Other than fundraising, where he buys senatorial support, the Broken Old Crow is a loser, and very bad for the Republican Party!”
A spokesman for McConnell did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
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