Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell quipped Friday that he’s warming up to President Donald Trump’s tweets after the President largely stayed on message in the final days of a major push by Republicans to overhaul the country’s tax system.
“Regarding the President’s tweeting habits, I haven’t been a fan until this week,” McConnell said Friday at a Washington news conference when asked how his relationship with Trump had evolved this year. “I’m warming up to the tweets.”
In the summer, the President repeatedly tweeted critical comments of McConnell and Senate Republicans after their failure to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. He demanded that McConnell keep working on health care as well as ensure a better outcome on tax reform.
For his part, McConnell said at a public event in August that the President had “excessive expectations” for the speed at which Congress could operate. In response, Trump turned the spotlight back on McConnell. “I don’t think so,” he tweeted. “After 7 years of hearing Repeal & Replace, why not done?”
The public feud raised questions as to whether the White House and Congress could work together to accomplish their ambitious goal to get tax reform done by the end of the year.
But McConnell said Friday that he felt the tax effort helped unify both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. He and the President have established a “good working relationship,” McConnell said, adding “you can sense this tax exercise kind of brought everybody together.”
