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The headline above is an exact quote of what Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) had to say about Donald Trump's indictment. Nothing. Zero. Crickets. While some Republicans are saying that the judge hates Trump and he is being railroaded, McConnell didn't have anything to say at all. Is it because of his health problems? Well, he has recovered well enough from his concussion that he was able to congratulate Finland on its admission to NATO. The Trump business must have just slipped his mind. It takes a while to fully recover from a concussion.
Al Cross, a professor of journalism at the University of Kentucky, has long followed McConnell's career very closely. When asked about McConnell's silence, he said: "There will be other shoes to drop and I expect Mitch McConnell knows more about Donald Trump's situation than we do. He is one of the most influential and best-informed people in the country and has all kinds of sources of information and he probably sees other things coming." Scott Jennings, a Republican strategist who has advised McConnell in the past and knows him well, said that McConnell wants to stay clear of Trump, no doubt due to what he sees ahead. Trump has attacked McConnell furiously in the past, but McConnell generally just pulls his head inside his shell and waits for the danger to pass, as all good turtles do.
McConnell is concentrating on winning back the Senate. He has said: "We're focusing now to try to get the very most electable candidates nominated in West Virginia, Montana, Ohio and Pennsylvania." What he didn't mention is that in some of those cases, his turtle in the race will be opposed by Trump's. He knows how that turned out in 2022 and is not looking for a repeat performance. Apparently his "Trump strategy" is to simply ignore the former president and stay laser-focused on the top Senate races.
Over in the other chamber, things couldn't be more different. Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) Tuesday tweeted: "Bragg is attempting to interfere in our democratic process by invoking federal law to bring politicized charges against President Trump, admittedly using federal funds, while at the same time arguing that the peoples' representatives in Congress lack jurisdiction to investigate this farce." Alvin Bragg's office revealed earlier this week that about $5,000 of the Trump investigation was covered by federal funds. Of course, this is a tiny fraction of the overall cost, and the DA only had the money in the first place because Congress appropriated it. It's not like Cyrus Vance and Bragg hopped in their cars and robbed the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. (V)