Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) wouldn’t call Donald Trump’s attacks on a federal judge’s “Mexican” heritage racist on Tuesday, despite House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) saying Trump’s attacks qualified as the “textbook definition” of racism.
Instead, McConnell appeared to be increasingly fed up with answering for his party’s presumptive nominee and called on him to stop attacking minority groups.
“It’s time to quit attacking various people that you competed with or various minority groups within the country and get on message,” McConnell said.
Facing a slew of questions about Trump’s attacks on U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel from reporters on Capitol Hill, McConnell argued he’d answered for Trump enough last week during his book tour, where he argued over and over again that it was time for Trump to stick to the script and stop attacking his personal enemies.
“I was asked in the course of last week on numerous occasions to express myself on various utterances of our nominee,” the majority leader said. “I have done that and unless there was some new comment today, I don’t have anything to add.”
McConnell insisted that he wouldn’t comment when pushed to address Trump’s reported declaration that journalists covering his attacks on Curiel were “racist,” as well as Trump’s suggestion that Muslim judges also may treat him unfairly.
“I was asked about every incident last week. I have already said I disapproved of them time and time and time again,” McConnell said. “I really don’t have anything to add beyond my disapproval of what has been said on all of these issues.”
The scrum with McConnell revealed just how long a road Republicans have ahead of them as they contend with Trump, a nominee who was not the first choice for many GOPers and who may prove to be a liability both in the general election and for the Republican Party’s legacy.
For his part, McConnell did double down on his argument that Trump could alienate the GOP from Latino voters for generations to come.
“What I said was that I was worried that we would do to the Latino vote what was done to the African-American vote by defining our party in such a way that we could not reach out to what has become the nation’s largest minority group,” McConnell said. “I am worried about that.”
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