Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will speak at the Kentucky Republican Party’s annual Lincoln Day Dinner Saturday evening, presenting an opportunity for him to weigh in on drama unfolding in Washington.
But don’t hold your breath.
While there is ample controversy to discuss — from Trump’s pardoning Friday of former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, to his directive banning transgender military recruits, to his continued attacks on members of McConnell’s Senate majority, including the majority leader himself — the Kentucky Republican has been sticking to the GOP agenda in remarks in his home state during the August congressional recess.
As he has traveled around his home state this week, McConnell has downplayed speculation that he and President Donald Trump are sparring, despite reports that the two men haven’t spoken since a tense August 9 phone call.
Sources with knowledge of the call said the exchange quickly devolved into a shouting match, as an irate Trump expressed his frustrations about the congressional investigation into Russian interference in the US election last year and fumed about a Russia sanctions bill Congress passed that would tie Trump’s hands on the matter.
Saturday’s dinner, a celebration of the Republican Party’s electoral gains over the last year, comes as Trump has taken McConnell to task in recent days for his handling of the failed vote to repeal parts of Obamacare and for not moving legislation to raise the debt ceiling.
But on Thursday morning — just minutes after Trump criticized McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan on Twitter for not tying debt-ceiling legislation to a popular Veterans Affairs bill — McConnell got up at a Kentucky Farm Bureau breakfast and delivered mostly glowing remarks about the hard work the Trump administration is doing in helping Congress roll back regulations and pursue comprehensive tax reform.
Minutes later, Trump tweeted again about his frustration with McConnell.
“The only problem I have with Mitch McConnell is that, after hearing Repeal & Replace for 7 years, he failed! That should NEVER have happened!” he wrote.
Earlier this month, McConnell sparked similarly critical tweets from Trump after the Kentucky Republican said at an event in his home state that Trump had “excessive expectations about how quickly things happen in the democratic process.”
But if Trump is looking to get into a public fight with McConnell, the majority leader has not been engaging. That’s for good reason. When Congress returns to Washington next month, McConnell will have to work with Trump to raise the debt ceiling, pass a budget and also pass a spending bill to keep the government funded. That doesn’t even begin to address the massive tax cuts McConnell hopes to enact alongside Trump.
Meanwhile, at a rally in Phoenix on Tuesday, Trump threatened to shut down the government to force Congress to approve money for a wall on the US border with Mexico.
Back in Kentucky, voters are watching the tensions between McConnell and Trump closely. Trump remains popular in the state after winning the 2016 election by more than 30 points, and it’s clear that going head to head with Trump isn’t likely to help McConnell with voters here.
“McConnell’s supposed to get people together to vote for what the President wants and he’s not doing it,” Henry Johnson, a Kentucky voter, told CNN Thursday at the state fair.
In a statement Wednesday, McConnell rejected reports that he and Trump aren’t seeing eye to eye.
“We have a lot of work ahead of us, and we are committed to advancing our shared agenda together, and anyone who suggests otherwise is clearly not part of the conversation,” McConnell said.