Few truly loathe Trump more than Mitch McConnell, but he's been his top enabler | Sidney Blumenthal

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

85% : Watching Trump's win on election night, McConnell said: "The first thing that came to my mind was the supreme court."
74% : McConnell's relationship with Trump got him what he wanted.
73% : McConnell's cold arrangement with Trump was strictly business: McConnell protected Trump in exchange for Trump packing the court.
68% : McConnell made plain the purely transactional basis of the relationship when he endorsed Trump after Super Tuesday, citing how "we worked together to accomplish great things for the American people ... a generational change of our federal judiciary - most importantly, the supreme court".
68% : McConnell remained complacent that he was the enduring Republican standard and Trump the blip.
67% : On 4 March came another supreme court-delivered victory for Trump.
66% : For these gifts from this court, Trump owes a debt of ultimate gratitude to Mitch McConnell.
61% : Even as McConnell announced his retirement, his aides were negotiating his endorsement of Trump.
60% : "A big win for America," tweeted Trump.
51% : A week after the election, Leo carried a list of court nominees into a meeting with Trump at Trump Tower.
46% : The reference to "future challenges" applies first and foremost to Donald Trump.
44% : It would be his final performance as Trump's enabler for which, like everyone else who enables Trump, he would inevitably receive ashes.
42% : As soon as McConnell heard the news he called Trump: "First, I'm going to put out a statement that says we're going to fill the vacancy.
41% : Trump remarked privately, "Mitch McConnell.
38% : With its aid and comfort to Trump in both the disqualification and immunity cases, the Roberts court (or, if one prefers, the Thomas court) has shown itself to be the most politically driven since the Taney court that decided the Dred Scott case (or, if one prefers, the Rehnquist/Scalia court that brutally decided Bush v Gore).
38% : Trump was a "despicable person" whose influence he would finally end by defeating his candidates in the 2022 midterms.
37% : Slow-walking the January 6 prosecution of Trump, the court has granted him de facto immunity for the course of the campaign.
35% : "My view is that Trump will not change the Republican party," he said.
32% : In a spray of divided opinion the court's overturning of the state of Colorado's ruling that Trump was disqualified from the ballot for being an insurrectionist under the 14th amendment section 3 enhanced his impunity and encouraged his grasp for absolute power.
32% : To defend Trump, the conservative majority threw overboard originalism and textualism, the alpha and omega of its contrived legal ideology, as an obstacle to the desired result.
32% : Not that Trump is Hitler, of course, just that the book of Hitler's table conversation is the only book Trump is known to have kept on his nightstand.
26% : Through a bizarre concatenation of historical falsehoods and legal contrivances, they refused to define whether Trump is an insurrectionist, or mention the word, which is the essence of the relevant section 3.
24% : In his floor speech explaining why he voted against Trump's removal, he made the case that Trump's actions properly belonged to the criminal justice system: "President Trump is still liable for everything he did while he was in office, as an ordinary citizen, unless the statute of limitations has run, still liable for everything he did while in office, didn't get away with anything yet - yet.
22% : He recovered his equanimity within hours when he thought the event would destroy Trump.
17% : After Trump bulldozed his way to the nomination, McConnell expected him to be a dead weight on Republican Senate candidates.
16% : That very worst enemy is not Joe Biden, who he likes and would destroy out of cold partisanship, but Trump, who he hates with a white-hot passion, but whom he has safeguarded and would help become "dictator for a day".
12% : Their unholy alliance cannot be mistaken for a Faustian bargain; neither had much soul left to sellThe convergence on 28 February of Mitch McConnell's retirement announcement as the Republican Senate leader with the supreme court's order to accept Donald Trump's appeal to consider his immunity from prosecution was a bitter irony for McConnell and triumph for Trump.
10% : "McConnell had shielded Trump from removal in the Senate during his first impeachment for seeking to blackmail the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in exchange for fabricated political dirt on Joe Biden.
8% : In 2022, Trump tweeted a thinly disguised death threat against McConnell and a racist slur against Chao.
7% : McConnell told Trump: "MrPresident, when are you going to thank me for that?"Six weeks before election day, on 18 September 2020, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died.

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