Donald Trump, Nikki Haley push Mitch McConnell to step aside after freeze-up: ‘Know when to walk away’
Former President Donald Trump and 2024 Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley have said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell should leave his post or be removed from it after the Kentucky Republican froze up while speaking to reporters last week.
“I thought it was sad,” Trump, 77, told Breitbart over the weekend about the incident, in which McConnell, 81, stopped in the middle of an answer and stared vacantly for about 30 seconds before being led from the microphone by his colleagues.
“We have to have that,” the 45th president added when asked if it was time for someone else to take command of the Senate Republican conference, which McConnell has led since 2007.
Haley, 51, who has called for mental competency tests for politicians over 75, was more pointed in a statement of her own.
“We’ve got to stop electing people because we like them and they’ve been there a long time. That’s actually the problem,” the former ambassador to the United Nations told CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday.
“What I’m saying about Mitch McConnell, [Sen.] Dianne Feinstein, Joe Biden, [former House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi, all of them: know when to walk away,” she added. “We have huge issues that need new solutions, we need new generational leaders.
“We appreciate your service. We appreciate what you’ve done. But this is why we will fight for term limits. We’ve got to get it done in America.”
McConnell has suffered several health scares this year. A March 8 fall left him with a concussion and broken rib and sidelined him from the upper chamber for several weeks.
On July 14, McConnell tripped and fell while deplaning a canceled flight at Washington’s Reagan National Airport. He has also used a wheelchair on occasion to move around in crowded areas, NBC News reported.
Following last week’s incident, Sen. Ted Budd (R-NC) revealed to reporters that McConnell also slipped and fell in February while leading a delegation of senators to Finland, but appeared to suffer no ill effects from that incident.
Trump has harbored great animosity toward McConnell since the senator rebuked him over the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
Last fall, Trump even backed Sen. Rick Scott’s (R-Fla.) unsuccessful endeavor to topple McConnell from his leadership post.
“We have some people in the Senate that are fantastic and would be great at that position,” the 45th president said before adding of McConnell: “I hope he’s well.”
In the same interview, however, Trump accused McConnell of enabling President Biden to enact massive spending legislation, most notably the bipartisan infrastructure spending law of 2021.
“I think it’s a shame he went so far out to give Green New Deal money to Biden and Democrats,” the former president said. “He got 10 people to vote because they needed 10 people, and he got 10 people to vote on numerous occasions for trillions of dollars. I think that’s a shame. But that was too bad. That was a sad thing to see. He had a bad fall, I guess, and [it was] probably an after-effect of that.”
On “Face The Nation,” Haley praised McConnell’s leadership before calling for generational change.
“I think Mitch McConnell did an amazing job when it comes to our judiciary,” she said. “When we look at the judges, when we look at the Supreme Court, he’s been a great leader.”
McConnell has indicated he plans to serve out his current Senate term, which ends in early 2027.
Should McConnell depart office early, Kentucky law requires the current governor, Democrat Andy Beshear, to appoint a Republican to replace him.
