Since leaving office, former President Donald Trump has made no mystery of his desire to exact revenge on Mitch McConnell, by rallying pro-Trump senators to block McConnell from returning to his perch as majority leader. But the ex-president has been tight-lipped about who, exactly, he would want to back as McConnell’s prospective dethroner.
However, in private conversations with close associates over the past several months, at Mar-a-Lago and elsewhere, Trump has batted around a handful of GOP senators’ names in his quest to stick it to the riot-averse “dumb son of a bitch” McConnell. Since at least late last year, Trump has been asking a recurring question.
“Do you think Lindsey could do it?” he has asked advisers, according to two sources who’ve heard him pose this same question at different points over the past four months.
He was, of course, referring to Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who was one of Trump’s preferred golf buddies and confidants on Capitol Hill during his four years in the White House.
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At this stage, a handful of visible right-wing primary contenders, such as Eric Greitens in Missouri and Kelly Tshibaka in Alaska, have pledged to vote to dump McConnell should they end up on Capitol Hill. But according to three people familiar with the matter, Trump’s flurry of calls and meetings looking for ways to expel McConnell from a leadership position have yielded unimpressive results, so far.
“If I’m being honest, it’s not going well,”one of the sources, who has tried to help the ex-president on his vengeful quest, conceded, noting that there is scant appetite among Senate Republicans, and among many top-tier conservative candidates, to go along with this. Various Trump allies and lawmakers have already told the former president that it would be a bad idea to try to oust McConnell, which would risk sparking further intra-party tumult at this point in the Biden era.
It also doesn’t help that Graham, one of the senators on Trump’s shortlist of preferred leaders, says he isn’t even interested in taking Minority Leader McConnell’s former job, and literally laughed off the idea when asked about Trump’s proposal for his future.
Reached by phone on Monday, Graham said, “I know [Trump] is not pleased with Sen. McConnell,” but claimed that in Graham and Trump’s conversations, “he has not gone down that road with me.”
Asked if he’d want to assume the leadership post, Graham simply replied, “not me” and “no,” while audibly chortling on the call.
Trump’s going to have to give up some of that cash if he wants Senators to dump their generous Senate leader. But I don’t see that happening, do you?