Apparently there’s no love lost between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY).
Punchbowl obtained an excerpt of journalist Susan Page’s autobiography of Pelosi titled “Madam Speaker” that illustrates the Democratic leader’s icy relationship with McConnell in plain terms.
“Mitch McConnell is not a force for good in our country,” Pelosi told Page. “He is an enabler of some of the worst stuff, and an instigator of some of it on his own.”
The biographer also reported that Pelosi calls McConnell “Moscow Mitch,” a moniker she adopted after the Republican bragged about being the “grim reaper” of House legislation back when he was the Senate majority leader, because she knows it bothers him.
The Democrat’s animus toward McConnell was inflamed by his refusal to allow late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda after her death in September, according to Page. The GOP senator also did not accept an invitation to attend Ginsburg’s memorial service, nor did House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), according to Page.
Immediately after Ginsburg passed away, McConnell leapt to fill the vacant SCOTUS seat before the 2020 elections in a blatant contradiction of his made-up rule in 2015 about waiting until after an election to confirm a Supreme Court nominee. Then-President Donald Trump’s pick, Amy Coney Barrett, was confirmed about a week before Trump lost the race to Joe Biden.
