Mitch McConnell’s got nothing
A number of Republicans are reveling in the latest Iraqi airstrikes – and not necessarily just because a dangerous adversary of the United States was brought down – but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell isn’t exactly among them. Instead, he gave a speech on the Senate floor on Friday to admonish his Democratic colleagues in Congress for questioning the nature of the offensive.
Generally, if the country is at the brink of war, particularly one that a leader starts out of desperation – as many people are accusing Donald Trump of doing – then you would assume that someone in McConnell’s position would use the Senate floor to unite both political parties, persuading them into believing the airstrikes were necessary and then debating the necessary moves that should follow.
Instead, McConnell just revealed that he’s working with nothing. He desperately wants to do damage control for Trump and his fellow Republicans and doesn’t have a whole lot to rationalize the attacks with. In his speech, he rather absurdly suggested that his colleagues not rush to judgment until they hear from the administration regarding the attacks – whenever that may happen.
Of course, he decided to leave out the fact that neither Nancy Pelosi nor Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer were given advance notice of the attacks – a decision that Trump has decided to flaunt on Twitter by retweeting the words of conspiracy theorist Dinesh D’Souza who said Democrats were not briefed for the same reason the Iranians weren’t. By refusing to even have the debate and quietly condoning behavior like this, McConnell looks like he’s still holding a grudge over the impeachment trial – and in doing so, he’s making it that much harder to believe that there isn’t a direct correlation between Trump’s actions and impeachment.
James Sullivan is the assistant editor of Brain World Magazine and an advocate of science-based policy making