Name: The Donald Trump-Mitch McConnell Rift Is Exploding Into Open Warfare
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The Donald Trump-Mitch McConnell Rift Is Exploding Into Open Warfare

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They had an alliance forged, if not in admiration, then in a shared recognition that the success of their projects was intertwined. Mitch McConnell wasn’t the type to join Donald Trump on the golf course like Lindsey Graham, and Trump rarely spoke of McConnell in the kinds of personal terms—positive or negative—that he did with others in the GOP. Theirs was a business relationship, and a profitable one at that: McConnell remade the courts, and Trump remade the Republican party.But political marriages of convenience tend to dissolve after they no longer serve their purpose, and the end of theirs has been particularly acrimonious. The , the to pack the bench? Those days are over. Sure, McConnell at his second impeachment trial last week—he’s still a Republican, after all—but he followed it with as blistering a criticism of the former president a member of the GOP has issued this side of Mitt Romney. “There is no question,” McConnell of the January 6 attack on the Capitol, “that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day.”No longer needing McConnell to lend the imprimatur of establishment legitimacy to his populist movement, Trump wasted no time hitting back, releasing a via his Save America PAC in which he excoriated the “dour, sullen, and unsmiling” Senate Minority Leader for lacking in “political insight, wisdom, skill, and personality.” “He doesn’t have what it takes,” Trump wrote. “Never did, and never will.” It was typical Trump, the kind of rage he has always unleashed in response to even mild criticism, but apparently an original draft was even worse: According to Politico, an earlier version of the statement went after both McConnell’s political dexterity and his looks. “There was also a lot of repetitive stuff,” a person familiar with the composition of the statement the outlet, “and definitely something about him having too many chins but not enough smart.” (Jason Miller, a Trump adviser who helped craft the statement, denied to Politico that a previous version had gone after McConnell’s looks.)&nbsp;Advisers apparently persuaded Trump to nix the chin bit, but even without the schoolyard taunt it was plenty explosive, opening up yet another front in the GOP’s civil war. Until he lashed out against McConnell, the battle lines were drawn between the deranged sect of MAGA loyalists, which included the cowardly, the calculating, and true believers alike, and people like Romney and Adam Kinzinger, who have called on the party to be about something other than, as Ben Sasse memorably , “the weird worship of one dude.” But in blasting McConnell, Trump also declared war on those who enabled him not out of total devotion, but in pursuit of their own ends.McConnell, whose nihilism is matched only by his political skill, may have reached those ends regardless of Trump. But without McConnell, Trump’s presidential “achievements” may have amounted to little more than enraging people on Twitter for four years straight. But for the MAGA base, for whom Trump can never do wrong, those are Trump’s wins alone. And in the event of a political divorce, there’s no doubt whose side they’ll take. Some in the party worry this new phase of infighting could spell doom for them at the ballot box. “Mitch McConnell working with Donald Trump did a hell of a job,” Graham said in an with Sean Hannity Tuesday night. “They are now at each other’s throat.” “I am more worried about 2022 than I’ve ever been,” Graham added. “I don’t want to eat our own.”What Graham doesn’t seem to grasp—and which McConnell perhaps finally has—is that while their interests may briefly intersect with Trump’s, they will never fully align. Winning elections, packing courts, advancing ideology—the things they care about matter to Trump only inasmuch as they solidify his power. The only Republicans who will succeed in the Party of Trump are those who fully embrace that. Those who don’t, be it because of principle like Romney or politics in the case of McConnell, will be cast aside.The irony, of course, is that few did more than McConnell to build this iteration of the Republican party. He imbued Trump with political power, enabling both his empty grievance movement and his individual lies. including the big one for which he’d eventually rebuke him on the Senate floor. That he finally did so doesn’t make him the hero he’s tried, in the days since, to . It merely underscores how unholy their alliance was all along.More Great Stories From Vanity Fair&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;— Embedding With Pentagon Leadership in Trump’s — Donald From Women—And Then From America Itself— How Trump’s COVID Chaos Drowned the FDA in — Inside of Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump— After Wrecking the Country, Vacation Plans— Can Trump’s Be Deprogrammed?&nbsp;— Trump Makes an Exit With His — From the Archive: How Donald Trump Against Him— Not a subscriber? to receive full access to VF.com and the complete online archive now.Most Popular is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. He lives in Chicago.The freshest-and most essential-updates from Washington, Wall Street, and Silicon Valley.

They had an alliance forged, if not in admiration, then in a shared recognition that the success of their projects was intertwined. Mitch McConnell wasn’t the type to join Donald Trump on the golf course like Lindsey Graham, and Trump rarely spoke of McConnell in the kinds of personal terms—positive or negative—that he did with others in the GOP. Theirs was a business relationship, and a profitable one at that: McConnell remade the courts, and Trump remade the Republican party.But political marriages of convenience tend to dissolve after they no longer serve their purpose, and the end of...

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Writer. Contributor at VFHive. Words at GuardianUS, RollingStone, newrepublic, and more. Email: eric.david.lutz@gmail.com

Eric Lutz

Vanity Fair is a monthly magazine of popular culture, fashion, and current affairs published by Condé Nast in the United States.  The first version of Vanity Fair was published from 1913 to 1936. The imprint was revived in 1983 and currently includes five international editions of the magazine. As of 2018, the Editor-in-Chief is Radhika Jones.

The Donald Trump-Mitch McConnell Rift Is Exploding Into Open Warfare

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