Christian Smith
Former President Trump thanked Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) for his support in the presidential race on Wednesday.
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) spoke Thursday and shook hands with former President Trump during a meeting of the National Republican Senate Committee, the first time the two leaders have spoken since their disagreement in 2020.
“We had a very positive meeting. He and I had a chance to talk a little bit, we shook hands a few times,” McConnell told reporters after the meeting.
“It was a totally positive meeting,” he added. “I can’t think of anything I can tell you that was negative.”
McConnell and other senators said Trump received a standing ovation several times.
Senators said McConnell sat close to Trump at the meeting, giving him ample opportunity to talk to the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.
Sen. Roger Vime (R-Miss.), who attended the meeting, said Trump spoke “favorably” about McConnell and praised the Senate Republican leader’s efforts to keep the Republican conference as unified as possible.
“It was very cordial, very unifying,” Wicker told The Hill. “We talked about a range of issues and there was a really good feeling.”
Wicker said McConnell was sitting “right next to” Trump.
“The president spoke favorably about Mitch, about all the work he did to try to keep the conference together, even though some people strayed from time to time,” he said. “He was very complimentary.”
Another Republican senator who attended the meeting and requested anonymity said Trump went out of his way to praise McConnell or mention his name several times during the lunch.
“The senator said Trump was “making a point of projecting a positive attitude toward Mitch” and “never” made “reference to any disagreement.”
Relations between Trump and McConnell have been strained since McConnell recognized Joe Biden as president-elect following the Electoral College vote in mid-December 2020.
McConnell opposed Trump’s effort to block the certification of Biden’s victory in Congress on Jan. 6, 2021, the same day a mob of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in a failed attempt to disrupt the process.
The leader of the Republican Party in the Senate criticized Trump’s actions before the attack on the Capitol, when he denounced him on the Senate floor in February 2021 as “practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day”.
Trump has regularly attacked McConnell in recent years, mocking him as an “old crow” and belittling his wife, former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, as “Coco Chow” and his “China-loving wife.”
Even so, McConnell endorsed Trump for president in March after he won the GOP nomination for president following Super Tuesday.
He reminded reporters on Tuesday that he had said weeks after the 2021 attack on the Capitol that he would support the party’s presidential nominee, even if it was Trump.
“I said three years ago, right after the attack on the Capitol, that I would support our nominee no matter who it was — including him,” McConnell said earlier this week. “I said earlier this year that the support – he won the nomination from voters across the country.
Al Weaver contributed.
This article was updated at 3:40 p.m.
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