The Back Channel talks to secure McConnell’s endorsement of Trump

Donald J. Trump and Mitch McConnell haven’t said a word to each other since December 2020.

But people close to both men are working behind the scenes to make the enmity between them a thing of the past and pave the way for a critical endorsement of the former president from the only Republican congressional leader who has not yet offered one, according to three famous people. with the talks not authorized to discuss the situation publicly.

Assuming this happens, Mr. McConnell’s support for Mr. Trump would have enormous symbolic value for the former president, giving him the last pillar of Republican power, whose rejection of him represents the last bit of unconquered territory in Mr Trump’s march to the US the party’s 2024 presidential nomination.

The support of Mr. McConnell, the Republican senator from Kentucky and the House minority leader, would also be instrumental in signaling to an entire class of donors and Trump-resistant Republican elites that it is acceptable to back the expected nominee of to stand by the party – no matter what. their doubts. This is no small matter, considering that Mr. Trump has already had to spend more than $50 million in legal bills, and the groups that support him are expected to be outspent significantly more by President Biden’s operation.

The secret talks between the Trump and McConnell camps took place between the two men’s top advisers who have known and worked with each other for more than two decades: Chris LaCivita, a top campaign adviser to Mr. Trump, and Josh Holmes, a confidant and political strategist for Mr. McConnell for many years.

Since around the time of the Iowa caucuses last month, Mr. LaCivita and Mr. Holmes began to make more concerted efforts to exchange information — especially about Mr. Trump’s endorsements in the Senate — and to build an opening create a more productive working relationship.

Both Mr. Trump and Mr. McConnell were informed of this back channel between the two camps. In late January, Mr. Trump had told people close to him that he expected Mr. McConnell to support him.

Mr. McConnell has always said he will support the Republican Party’s nominee, even if that is the case asked specifically about Mr. Trump, whom he had described as “practically and morally responsible” for provoking the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol. But when his likely approval will occur is a matter of debate.

Mr Trump faces his first criminal trial at the end of March and is keen to consolidate behind him every faction of the party and its donor class as quickly as possible. That would take a long time before a nomination is finally confirmed at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee in July.

“President Trump is the presumptive nominee and it is time for the entire party to rally behind him to defeat Crooked Joe Biden,” Trump communications director Steven Cheung said in a statement to The New York Times when asked about the private conversations. between Mr. LaCivita and Mr. Holmes.

“Senior members of the campaign have had many conversations,” Mr. Cheung added, “but will only engage with those who are actually willing to fight for America First principles and take back the White House.”

A McConnell spokesman, Doug Andres, declined to comment.

With his first victory over Nikki Haley in her home state of South Carolina on Saturday, Trump has now swept all the primary voting states by comfortable margins, and polls show him leading in well over a dozen Super Tuesday contests.

He already has the support of House Speaker Mike Johnson, and on Sunday he was endorsed by Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, McConnell’s deputy and No. 2 in the Senate Republican leadership.

Sen. Steve Daines of Montana, the leader of the Senate Republican campaign arm, has privately encouraged the two camps to seek reconciliation, according to two people familiar with his engagement. When asked about this, Mr. Daines said in a statement: “I encourage the Republican Party to rally behind President Trump. We will all have to work together to win the Senate and defeat Joe Biden in November.”

Since the new year, both the Trump and McConnell teams have made efforts to avoid open warfare. It’s been a while since Mr. Trump has demeaned Mr. McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, as “Coco Chow” or as Mr. McConnell’s “China-loving wife.” Ms. Chao, a native of Taiwan, had served in Trump’s Cabinet as Secretary of Transportation, but she resigned a day after the attack on the Capitol, calling it “a traumatic and completely avoidable event.”

Then the Fox News host Laura Ingraham asked Mr. Trump directly addressed Mr. McConnell at a town hall last week. Mr. Trump criticized the Senate minority leader, but gently by Mr. Trump’s standards.

‘He’ll probably support me in the end. I don’t know if I can work with him,” Mr. Trump told Ms. Ingraham. “He gave away trillions of dollars that he didn’t need, trillions of dollars. He made it very easy for the Democrats.”

To any normal ear, to any normal politician, that would amount to a scathing attack. But compared to the kinds of things Mr. Trump has said about Mr. McConnell before — including regular ones comparisons with stool – these comments were interpreted as blows by McConnell allies.

Yet Mr. McConnell has watched in recent weeks as a bipartisan immigration bill he had pushed for died, with Mr. Trump urging the lawmakers who helped kill it. Funding for Ukraine to fight Russia is a particularly important priority for Mr. McConnell, who sees it as part of his legacy, and he used his capital to push through a national security spending package after the earlier bill collapsed. But the episode further exposed the raw nerves that exist between Mr. McConnell and some of his colleagues.

The relationship between Mr. Trump and Mr. McConnell has never been warm and probably never will be. They despise each other, and Mr. McConnell was shocked by Mr. Trump’s rise in 2016. But Mr. McConnell is nothing if not practical, and during Mr. Trump’s presidency he put aside his own disdain for Mr. Trump and they worked together to succeed. a major tax cut bill and to confirm a record number of federal judges. Mr. McConnell’s crowning achievement was working with Mr. Trump to transform the Supreme Court — confirming three conservative justices who have achieved long-standing Republican goals such as overturning Roe v. Wade.

The disastrous and deadly aftermath of the 2020 election destroyed whatever existed of their relationship.

Mr. McConnell came to view Mr. Trump as a dangerous liability after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and the loss of two crucial Senate races in Georgia, for which he blamed the former president’s destructive behavior. He told people close to him that he never expected to talk to Mr. Trump again. And he told Senate colleagues that serious consideration was given to convicting Trump in his second impeachment trial, but ultimately decided against it.

On February 13, 2021, Mr. McConnell delivered a speech on the Senate floor to explain his decision not to convict on constitutional grounds, which amounted to his own indictment of Mr. Trump.

“The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their president,” he said.

Mr. McConnell said that day that he thought the criminal justice system was a more appropriate platform to hold Mr. Trump accountable for his actions leading up to Jan. 6 and that Mr. Trump “is still accountable for everything he did while he was in the country’. office.” Read today, that statement seems like an artifact of a political party that no longer exists.

Two weeks after he gave that speech, in late February 2021, Mr. McConnell predicted on Fox News that the 2024 presidential election would be a “wide-open race.” When pressed by the interviewer, Bret Baier, on whether he would support Mr. Trump if he came back to win the Republican nomination, Mr. McConnell, who at the time thought Mr. Trump was a problem of the past, replied: “The candidate of the party? Absolute.”

Throughout 2021 and 2022, when privately asked about Mr. Trump, Mr. McConnell assured his audience that the best way to deal with the former president was to ignore him rather than attack him head-on, as Liz Cheney did . .

It was not just an easy answer but, as Mr. McConnell saw it, a politically necessary one. Trump was still the most popular Republican in the country. And Mr. McConnell oversaw a conference of senators who mostly wanted Mr. Trump gone, but who also knew that their political survival depended on staying on the good side of the party’s angry MAGA base. Public deference to Mr. Trump became the price for keeping their jobs.

As it became clear in recent months that Trump was likely to win the Republican nomination for a third time, McConnell assured his colleagues that he would do whatever it took to unite the party and regain control of the Senate.