Kentucky County Demands Mitch McConnell Resign as Republican Senate Leader

Then President Donald Trump and then Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell arrive for the Senate Republican policy lunch at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on May 15, 2018. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)

A county Republican Party in Kentucky demanded that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) resign as leader after his comments on the Senate floor over the weekend.

“I do not take this action lightly and understand the ramifications in doing so,” Nelson County GOP Chair Don Thrasher said in a written statement released on Feb. 16, noting that he received Trump’s statement about McConnell’s leadership. “As the highest ranking Republican in that position you are de facto leader of the National Republican Party.”

“The overwhelming number of Republicans in Nelson County are not on your side on this issue and I speak on their behalf,” he wrote, noting that McConnell’s “leadership does not represent the Republican voters that put our faith in you in the last primary election” before asking the Senate Republican leader to resign.

The Epoch Times reached out to McConnell’s office for comment. McConnell hasn’t issued a response to Trump’s statement.

The Nelson County Republican Party censured McConnell last month over the Republican leader’s comments on the Senate floor condemning Trump’s Jan. 6 speech to supporters.

On Feb. 16, Trump released a statement via his Save America PAC in which he called on Republican senators to abandon McConnell and threatened primary challenges to Republican incumbents.

“Where necessary and appropriate, I will back primary rivals who espouse Making America Great Again and our policy of America First,” Trump wrote in the statement.

He also noted McConnell’s family ties to China via his wife Elaine Chao, whose family owns a shipping business that reportedly has close connections with the country. “McConnell has no credibility on China because of his family’s substantial Chinese business holdings.”

Also in the statement, Trump paints McConnell as out of touch with the GOP’s voter base.

McConnell, he said, is responsible for Republicans losing the Senate because he wouldn’t support Trump’s proposal for $2,000 stimulus checks. Democrats then weaponized Trump’s demand and used the $2,000 stimulus payments as a campaign proposal, according to Trump’s statement.

McConnell wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed following the impeachment effort, suggesting that Trump was the one who was responsible for the Republican Senate majority loss.

“Georgia was a fiasco,” McConnell wrote. “We all know why that occurred.”

Although he voted to acquit Trump during the Senate impeachment trial, McConnell suggested that Trump could face civil or criminal penalties for his Jan. 6 speech to supporters.

“Jan. 6 was a shameful day. A mob bloodied law enforcement and besieged the first branch of government. American citizens tried to use terrorism to stop a democratic proceeding they disliked,” McConnell wrote in the article.

“There is no question former President Trump bears moral responsibility. His supporters stormed the Capitol because of the unhinged falsehoods he shouted into the world’s largest megaphone,” he stated. “His behavior during and after the chaos was also unconscionable, from attacking Vice President Mike Pence during the riot to praising the criminals after it ended.”