McConnell called Trump 'despicable' and a 'narcissist,' cried after Capitol riot, new book says

WASHINGTON – Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell privately described then-President Donald Trump as "stupid as well as being ill-tempered," "despicable" and a "narcissist," after the 2020 election, according to excerpts from a forthcoming biography of the longtime Senate power broker.

The remarks, recorded by McConnell and shared with Associated Press Deputy Washington Bureau Chief Michael Tackett, are McConnell's strongest condemnation yet of the former president, despite years of a famously frosty relationship between the two men. The biography written by Tackett and titled "The Price of Power," is set to be released on Oct. 29, just a week before Election Day.

In the weeks following Election Day in 2020, when Trump and his campaign were working to overturn the election results, McConnell said in his recordings that “it’s not just the Democrats who are counting the days” until Trump left office, according to the AP. He also said that Trump’s behavior “only underscores the good judgment of the American people. They’ve had just enough of the misrepresentations, the outright lies almost on a daily basis, and they fired him.”

McConnell said it's been "really hard to take" the results "for a narcissist like him."

"So his behavior since the election has been even worse, by far, than it was before, because he has no filter now at all," he said.

McConnell also alleged Trump's efforts to overturn the election would hurt Republicans in Georgia runoff races for the Senate at the time, which would determine control of the chamber. Now-Sens. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, both Democrats, went on to win both races and take the chamber.

Trump is “stupid as well as being ill-tempered and can’t even figure out where his own best interests lie," he said.

McConnell also called him a "despicable human being" for "sitting on this package of relief that the American people desperately need," referencing a coronavirus aid package that Trump wouldn't approve. He did ultimately sign a stimulus package into law alongside a government spending bill at the end of 2020.

After Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol building as lawmakers met inside to certify the election results, McConnell said on the Senate floor that "this failed insurrection only underscores how crucial the task before us is for our republic.”

The AP reported that, after McConnell made the remarks, he went into his office and addressed staffers who had been hiding. He started to cry as he thanked them, calling the staffers "family."

McConnell and Trump repeatedly clashed throughout his presidency – from efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act to Trump's racist comments about McConnell's wife, then-Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao.

Publicly, McConnell largely stood by Trump during the years Trump was president and McConnell was Senate Majority Leader. But after Jan. 6, when the chamber was considering whether to convict the former president over the riot in an impeachment trial, McConnell took to the Senate floor to condemn Trump's role – before voting along with other GOP senators to acquit him.

“There’s no question, none, that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day,” McConnell said at the time, arguing the chamber has no power over a former president.

Trump, too, has had nasty words for McConnell over the years. After McConnell's public remarks following Jan. 6, Trump called him a "dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack."

McConnell has now endorsed Trump's 2024 presidential campaign and said in a statement to the AP that his comments about Trump "pales in comparison" with what now-close Trump allies Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., have said about him in the past.

"We are all on the same team now,” McConnell said.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: McConnell called Trump 'despicable' and a 'narcissist,' per new book