It seems KY Republican lawmaker and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell lost his cool during a recent interview with Axios reporter Jonathan Swan after the award-winning journalist pressed the GOP congressman face-to-face to answer for or somehow justify his years of support for Donald Trump — which only began to even slightly waver following the January 6th Capitol attack — for all those years, despite the fact that the now-ex-president’s list of sins and transgressions go far and beyond the infamous Capitol attack and election fraud conspiracy theories.
What’s even better, thanks to a clip aired on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, we got to watch Mitch get his knickers in a twist over the uncomfortable confrontation.
In a new sit-down interview, Swan pushed McConnell to say whether or not he had a “moral red line” when it came to his support for Republicans.
At first, the KY senator responded, “I think I have an obligation to support the nominee of my party.” But, as Swan continued to grill, Mitch began to try to cut off the Axios reporter’s line of questioning altogether.
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But Jonathan Swan has won awards for this shit, and he was not about to back down from the likes of Mitch McConnell.
“I’m just trying to understand, you know, what you say matters,” Swan pressed. “You are a very important voice of this country, you are the leader of your party and you seem to hold two conflicting positions.”
“Not at all inconsistent,” the Republican lawmaker said in response, clearly getting uncomfortable under Swan’s increasing pressure. “I stand by everything I said on January 6th and everything I said on February the 13th.”
“I understand. But what I want to understand, which I haven’t heard you address –” the Axios reporter pushed back, but McConnell was already trying to cut him off, stating, “Because I don’t get to pick the Republican nominee for president. They’re elected by the Republican voters all over the country.”
“I fully understand that,” Swan responded, “Take Liz Cheney, for example –”
At this point, Mitch was getting full-on antsy and snapped at the reporter, “You want to spend more time on this as well?”
“I actually do,” Swan said, refusing to back down. “I generally want to understand this, I want to understand how you think about this. because Liz Cheney, who has the same view as you of January 6th, she said she doesn’t want Donald Trump near the White House and she will work not to let that happen because she thinks there are some things more important than party loyalty.”
Mitch spit back, “Well, maybe you ought to be talking to Liz Cheney.”
“No, but I’m not trying — really, it is not a gotcha. I am trying to understand is there any threshold for you of what some of the people of normal level –,” Swan attempted again, but the Senate Minority Leader cut him off yet again, “I say many things I’m sure people don’t understand.”
You can watch the tense back and forth right here:
Featured image via Flickr/Gage Skidmore, under Creative Commons license 2.0
