“While McConnell initially seemed genuinely outraged by the riot and the presidential “lies” that “provoked” it, he pretty quickly abandoned any thought of trying to separate the Republican Party from the Trump personality cult.
“Former President Trump’s actions preceding the riot were a disgraceful dereliction of duty,” McConnell said after voting to acquit him (based on the position that former presidents cannot be tried in the Senate). “There is no question that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day. The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their president. And their having that belief was a foreseeable consequence of the growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories, and reckless hyperbole which the defeated president kept shouting into the largest megaphone on planet Earth. The issue is not only the president’s intemperate language on January 6th….It was also the entire manufactured atmosphere of looming catastrophe—the increasingly wild myths about a reverse landslide election that was being stolen in some secret coup by our now-president.”
But McConnell eventually decided that Trump’s domination of the GOP was inescapable, which meant there was no political advantage to be gained by dwelling on the former president’s reckless conspiracy mongering or the violence it inspired. Based on that assumption, it’s better for the party if any further interest in those subjects can be easily dismissed as blatantly partisan.”