I’ve been having more than a little trouble understanding why Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell is so reluctant to cross Donald Trump on his government shutdown, despite the fact that together, Trump and the GOP are robbing hundreds of thousands of Americans of their paychecks seemingly without a second thought.
At first, the best I could come up with was just kind of an inverse of what Mitch did during Barack Obama’s presidency: Back then, his one consideration for holding votes was whether it would hurt Obama or not, and if it wouldn’t, he didn’t hold the vote. Now he seems to hold the opposite view — unless it helps Donald Trump, he won’t hold a vote now.
That still really kind of wasn’t doing it for me as a theory, though. Trump is a historically unpopular president that most believe will be impeached, or at least go down in history as the worst leader the United States has ever had. Why would McConnell hitch his wagon to such a wild horse?
Then I thought maybe Russian money was the driving factor. Mitch, after all, got a lot of money from Len Blavatnik, the Ukrainian-born American who’s partners in an aluminum company with Oleg Deripaska, that Russian oligarch that Republican Senators — directed by Mitch — just voted to allow Trump to lift sanctions on. If any of the PAC money that McConnell got from Blavatnik was discovered to have come from his joint business with Deripaska, it would be illegal.
That’s a pretty good possibility, but what if it was something much simpler? What if it was simply the fact that Trump keeps rewarding Mitch like a good boy over and over with the kind of political appointments for his family members that money — Russian or otherwise — just can’t buy?
Then I heard the news on Thursday that Trump was appointing a woman named Elaine Chao to co-chair the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, and the name rang a bell. That’s probably because Elaine is Mitch McConnell’s wife, and it’s not the first thing Trump has appointed her to. In fact, as the Secretary of Transportation, Chao is the longest-serving member of Trump’s Cabinet, moving into the position a scant 11 days after Trump’s inauguration.
But at least Elaine Chao had experience in government before Trump appointed her. She was Secretary of Labor under George W. Bush and bounced around conservative think tanks in the eight years she wasn’t in government. Gordon Hartogensis, who Trump picked last May to lead the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp, a division of the Department of Labor that oversees the retirements of about 1.5 million people, had no experience in government at all — other than being married to Grace Chao. Does that last name sound familiar? It’s probably just that whole “it’s Mitch’s sister-in-law” thing.
So how deep does the loyalty go? Unfortunately, I think Mitch has got a combination going on of all the factors in this article — ugly partisanship, Russian money influence, and cushy appointments for the members of his family. We may have to address the turtle in the room before we can tackle the elephant.
Featured image via screen capture
