Intertwined with personality attacks and scathing statements, McConnell said Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement was “completely wrong.” Since Trump’s rise in politics nearly 10 years ago, McConnell, the longtime Republican leader, has grown more and more critical of the former president.

“I think Trump was the biggest factor in changing the Republican Party from what Ronald Reagan viewed and he wouldn’t recognize today,” McConnell told the Associated Press’s Michael Tackett for his biography, The Price of Power.

McConnell said Trump has “done a lot of damage to our party’s image and our ability to compete.” Since Trump’s win in 2016, many Trump-endorsed candidates have lost their elections, notably in Arizona and Michigan during the 2022 midterm elections.

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“Trump is appealing to people who haven’t been as successful as other people and providing an excuse for that, that these more successful people have somehow been cheated, and you don’t deserve to think of yourself as less successful because things haven’t been fair,” McConnell said.

McConnell also laid personality attacks against Trump, calling him a “sleazeball” and a “narcissist,” saying the former president is “stupid as well as being ill-tempered.” 

He called Trump’s behavior after he lost the election in 2020 “erratic” during the Stop the Steal movement and subsequent Jan. 6 riot.

“Unfortunately, about half the Republicans in the country believe whatever he says,” McConnell said at the time. “I think I’m pretty safe in saying it’s not just the Democrats who are counting the days until he leaves on January 20, but the Republicans as well.” 

While McConnell did vote to acquit Trump during his second impeachment, which was focused on the former president’s involvement in the Jan. 6 attack, Tackett reported that McConnell did consider voting to convict him at various points.

“I’m not at all conflicted about whether what the president did is an impeachable offense. I think it is. Urging an insurrection and people attacking the Capitol as a direct result … is about as close to an impeachable offense as you can imagine, with the possible exception of maybe being an agent for another country,” McConnell said.

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McConnell has supported special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into Trump’s actions around the 2020 election and the insurrection.

“I think it was the single most, in a category by itself, of how wrong all of it was, and there’s no doubt who inspired it, and I just hope that he’ll have to pay a price for it,” said McConnell. “If he hasn’t committed indictable offenses, I don’t know what one is.”