Mediaboss Marketing

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy outside the White House.Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Donald Trump said Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy could've "fought harder" for Republicans.

"Now they don't have anything," he told the ABC News correspondent Jonathan Karl in an interview.

While Trump remains in contact with McCarthy, he has shunned McConnell from his orbit.

Throughout President Donald Trump's last weeks in office, he fought to overturn his reelection loss, baselessly seeking to cast doubt on its legitimacy.

Trump, however, has reserved harsh judgment not only for President Joe Biden and the Democrats who control Congress but also key Republicans including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, whom Trump has lambasted for months, and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who hopes to ascend to the speakership after the 2022 midterm elections.

During an interview with ABC News' chief Washington correspondent, Jonathan Karl, Trump said the two men didn't do enough to keep Republicans in control of the White House, despite the former president's clear election loss.

"If McConnell and McCarthy fought harder, OK, you could have a Republican president right now, and now they don't have anything," Trump said during the conversation in an audio clip from March released in advance of Karl's forthcoming book, "Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show."

Despite the criticism, McCarthy has kept a presence in the Trumpworld orbit, beginning with a trip to the former president's residence at Mar-a-Lago just weeks after Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol on January 6 to try to stop the presidential vote's certification.

Earlier this year, the GOP leader also walked back one of his most direct critiques of Trump.

As the House was voting to impeach Trump on a charge of "incitement of insurrection" soon after the riot, McCarthy said "the president bears responsibility" for the siege.

On January 21, McCarthy then pivoted and said Trump did not initiate the insurrection.

Story continues

"I don't believe he provoked it if you listen to what he said at the rally," McCarthy said at the time, referring to a rally Trump held near the Capitol before the violence broke out.

During an interview that aired January 24, he went on to say "everybody across this country has some responsibility" for the attack.

McCarthy has since been publicly committed to the former president's political efforts for 2022 and beyond.

McConnell, who also blasted Trump's January 6-related conduct, has not spoken with the former president in months though he has said he'd support Trump if Trump were to become the 2024 Republican presidential nominee.

Trump has been making calls to advocate McConnell's ouster as the Senate Republican leader, but so far he hasn't had much success, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Read the original article on Business Insider

See more here:
Trump says Republicans could've kept the White House if Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy had 'fought harder' - Yahoo News