After years of division, Mitch McConnell confirms he'll support Trump for President

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell hasn't spoken to Donald Trump since before the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection attempt at the U.S. Capitol, but the senator from Kentucky is still backing the former president in the upcoming election.

In a statement Wednesday morning, McConnell said it's "abundantly clear that former President Trump has earned the requisite support of Republican voters to be our nominee for President of the United States."

He plans to support Trump as well, he said, with the presumptive GOP nominee expected to square off this November against current President Joe Biden.

"During (Trump's) presidency, we worked together to accomplish great things for the American people including tax reform that supercharged our economy and a generational change of our federal judiciary — most importantly, the Supreme Court," McConnell said in a statement provided to The Courier Journal and several media outlets. "I look forward to the opportunity of switching from playing defense against the terrible policies the Biden administration has pursued to a sustained offense geared towards making a real difference in improving the lives of the American people."

His decision comes the same morning Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and U.N. ambassador under Trump, suspended her campaign in the Republican primary, all but guaranteeing Trump will represent the GOP in the general election.

In a post on his Truth Social platform Wednesday afternoon, Trump acknowledged McConnell's endorsement.

"Thank you, Mitch," he wrote. "I look forward to working with you and a Republican Senate MAJORITY to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!"

McConnell announced last week he plans to step down from his leadership position in November, though he plans to remain in the U.S. Senate until his term ends at the end of 2026.

Al Cross, a professor of journalism at the University of Kentucky who's covered McConnell for decades, said the timing of his decision to step down may have been to "minimize or to reduce the impact of the endorsement," given the icy relationship between the pair.

"Clearly, this is not something Mitch McConnell relishes doing," said Cross, who writes contributing columns for The Courier Journal. "If he relished doing it, he would have stood up in public and given a statement rather than putting out a press release."

More coverage: 'Kentucky will lose clout': How McConnell's decision to leave leadership will impact state

McConnell has said he hasn't spoken to Trump since December 2020 — "the day after I declared that Biden had obviously won the election after the Electoral College (voted on) Dec. 14," he told reporters the following month. The pair publicly split after the 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol, where supporters of the former president tried to prevent Congress from certifying Biden's win.

McConnell broke from his Republican counterpart in the aftermath of that incident. While lawmakers considered impeaching Trump that February, the longtime Kentucky senator told colleagues there's "no question, none, that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day."

But McConnell did not vote to convict Trump, arguing the ex-president wasn't eligible for conviction because he had since left office, though he could face consequences in court. And despite his strong words that February on the Senate floor, where he said Trump "watched television happily — happily — as the chaos unfolded" during the riot, by the end of the month McConnell confirmed he'd support Trump again if he were the nominee in 2024.

In typical Trump fashion, McConnell has been a frequent target of the former president since then.

Since leaving office, Trump has derided the Kentucky senator as an "old crow" who's unfit for office (McConnell joked in 2022 that Old Crow bourbon is among his favorites, offering bottles to fellow GOP senators).

The former president has also repeatedly made racist comments about McConnell's wife, former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, calling her the senator's "China-loving wife, Coco Chow" in 2022. She was the first Cabinet secretary to resign in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 riot and described his comments later that year as a "racist taunt."

In an interview last month on Fox News, Trump said he wasn't sure if he'd be able to work with McConnell if he returned to the White House, though he did not include any personal insults in those comments at that time. Days later, McConnell announced his plans to step down as the GOP's Senate leader, as rumors swirled that people around the two politicians were working to secure an endorsement.

Despite the rift, McConnell is "a party man and a party leader," Cross said, and "it is the role of a party leader to get on board when the party is headed in a certain direction, or else you're not going to be the leader of the party — and I think he clearly wants to be leader of the party for the rest of this session of Congress."

The endorsement is a "business transaction," he said, as McConnell remains motivated to help his party regain the majority in the Senate.

What party that is, though, is a different question.

"What he's doing here is acknowledging that it's no longer the Republican Party. It's the Trump party," he said. "And if you're going to be a part of the party, you're going to have to be in harness, even if you don't like it.

"I just figured he wants to get it over with. It's something unpleasant, but you have to get it over with."

The Democratic National Committee wasted no time using McConnell's words against him after Wednesday's announcement, citing his quotes about the former president's involvement in the Jan. 6 riot in a release that contained other critical comments the senator has made about Trump in recent years.

"That's what McConnell thinks about Trump, and we couldn't agree more," the group said.

While Trump was in the White House, McConnell helped him confirm three U.S. Supreme Court justices, including one seat vacated under former President Barack Obama that the senator was able to keep open until Trump took office. More than 200 appeals and district court judges were appointed during his four-year term.

McConnell would be 84 if he ran for reelection in 2026 and has not said whether he plans to run again. Twice in the past year, he has frozen up and been unable to talk during press conferences.

He spoke briefly at the state Capitol in January, on the first day of the 2024 General Assembly, in support of five Kentucky Republicans who had won statewide offices in the 2023 election. Four of them — Auditor Allison Ball, Attorney General Russell Coleman, Treasurer Mark Metcalf and Agriculture Commissioner Jonathan Shell — announced Tuesday they're endorsing Trump in the upcoming race, beating McConnell to the punch.

Reach Lucas Aulbach at [email protected].

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Mitch McConnell endorses Donald Trump for 2024 presidential election