Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) dismissed Donald Trump as “a fading brand” in a conversation with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) in the weeks following President Joe Biden’s inauguration, according to Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Robert Costa’s new book “Peril.”
“There is a clear trend moving forward. Sucking up to Donald Trump is not a strategy that works,” McConnell reportedly told Graham during talks, around February time, about Trump’s future role and possible impact on the GOP.
According to Woodward and Costa:
“McConnell said he saw Trump as a fading brand. Retired. ‘OTTB’ as they say Kentucky — ‘off-the-track Thoroughbred.’”
Graham, a Trump sycophant, still considered the former president to be the “dominant force” in the party and said so in public, later warning that “the people who are trying to erase him are going to wind up getting erased.”
But McConnell wasn’t convinced and, per “Peril,” was “confident his preferred candidates could eventually outpace any ragtag network that Trump might try to assemble.”
The book, released Tuesday, also detailed Trump’s expletive-laden rant at McConnell for congratulating Biden on his election victory, and what Graham really thought of Trump’s election lies.
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