Tuesday afternoon, apparently startled by the immediate, nationwide popularity of fighter pilot Amy McGrath’s announcement that she was challenging Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for his Senate seat in Kentucky, Donald Trump issued a pair of tweets condemning the Democratic candidate for, ironically, what she said about him.
McGrath laid the blame for much of the dysfunction in Washington DC squarely at the feet of Senator McConnell, who was first elected to Congress more than 30 years ago:
Everything that’s wrong in Washington had to start some place. How did it come to this, that even within our own families we can’t talk to each other about the leaders of our country anymore without anger and blame? Well, that started with this man, who was elected a lifetime ago.”
That’s what McGrath says in the video she announced her campaign with, and as she says “this man,” the footage cuts to McConnell as a young senator. But it wasn’t her attack on McConnell that Trump apparently took issue with. Instead, he was upset about something she said at a fundraiser back in 2018, when she was describing how she felt after he won:
[T]hat morning I woke up like somebody had sucker punched me. I mean, I felt like, ‘what has just happened to my country?’ The only feeling I can describe that’s anything close to it was the feeling I had after 9/11. ‘What just happened, where are we going from here,’ and it was that just sinking feeling of sadness, and I didn’t know what to do.”
Trump heard that a little differently:
Democrats are coming after our great Kentucky Senator, Mitch McConnell, with someone who compared my election to September 11th….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 10, 2019
….Why would Kentucky ever think of giving up the most powerful position in Congress, the Senate Majority Leader, for a freshman Senator with little power in what will hopefully be the minority party. We need Mitch in the Senate to Keep America Great!!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 10, 2019
Uh, not quite.
But the challenge, whether successful or not, will require Republicans to focus a lot of time, money, and effort on a seat that seemed safe until an upstart fighter pilot decided to run for it. That’s good news for other candidates across the country. And if she DOES win, Trump’s primary ally will be gone — hopefully along with Trump himself.
Featured image via screen capture
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