A Gift for Free Subscribers!
Note: For the past three months, paid TBR subscribers have read a series of Sunday columns called Traitor of the Week, in which I have profiled the snakes who are enabling the fascist Trump regime.
This past week, in a free and fair election, those subscribers named Mitch McConnell America’s Top Traitor. And the competition was tough: the runner-up was Stephen Miller.
To share this historic moment with you, and to thank you for reading my work, I’m offering you the following Sunday Read profile of McConnell, free of charge. —Andy
America’s Top Traitor: Mitch McConnell
A brief review of McConnell’s disgraceful behavior during the Trump era—also known as the Fourth Reich—confirms that “mcconnell” would indeed be a worthy replacement for “quisling” in the dictionary.
Before Trump was elected, McConnell had already spent decades doing everything in his power to make the United States unfit for human habitation. Specifically, he worked tirelessly to ensure that as many Americans as possible were killed by guns.
Whenever gun control legislation was proposed in the wake of a mass shooting, you could count on Mitch to discourage his fellow senators from taking any action that might prevent similar tragedies in the future.
After a mass shooting in his home state of Kentucky in 1989, he warned, “We need to be careful about legislating in the middle of a crisis.” Yes, because… wait, why, exactly?
This call for caution became Mitch’s refrain whenever gun casualties threatened the profits of his NRA overlords. After a gunman slaughtered 60 people at a 2017 country music festival in Las Vegas, he dusted it off again, noting that "the investigation has not even been completed. And I think it’s premature to be discussing legislative solutions, if there are any.”
Though his Senate record inflicted grievous harm on the United States, it was his behavior during Trump’s second impeachment trial that clinched his place in the pantheon of American quislings.
After Trump incited the insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, McConnell said, “If this isn't impeachable, I don't know what is.” The House of Representatives heartily agreed, voting to impeach Trump for a historic second time.
As Senate Minority Leader, McConnell could have tried to whip enough votes to convict Trump—but instead, he voted to acquit. Wanting to have it both ways, he excoriated the former president after his acquittal, declaring, "There's no question that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day."
Three years later, in an Olympian display of flexibility, McConnell endorsed Trump for president.
McConnell’s recent behavior suggests he might be a tad worried about his place in history—snugly between Benedict Arnold and Judas Iscariot. In an eleventh-hour bid for redemption, he cast votes against the confirmation of some of Trump’s most ludicrous Cabinet-level nominees: Pete Hegseth, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Tulsi Gabbard. But those totally meaningless and symbolic votes can’t erase the damage done by the vote of his that counted most: his vote to acquit Trump. That’s the vote McConnell’s prosecutors are sure to hammer away at in his eventual tribunal.
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