Trump rails against election “fraud,” McConnell

Miami, Apr 11 (efe-epa).- Former President Donald Trump once again attacked Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell at a private fundraising event on the weekend in Florida, an occasion on which he also reiterated his unfounded claim that massive election fraud denied him re-election last November, US media outlets reported.

On Saturday evening, Trump once again called McConnell “a stone cold loser” before a group of several hundred donors and supporters who were attending the Republican National Committee’s spring retreat at a Palm Beach hotel.

In a pre-written speech, Trump did not attack any Republican lawmakers who have turned their backs on the ex-president since the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol but, according to USA Today’s reporting on Sunday morning citing anonymous sources present at the gathering, the president went off-script to attack McConnell.

Last January, McConnell accused Trump of fomenting the violent assault on Congress by thousands of the former president’s followers, an act of insurrection that resulted in five deaths and injury to hundreds of law enforcement and security personnel.

In his remarks Saturday evening, Trump also reiterated his baseless claims of fraud in the 2020 presidential election, accusations that have been rejected by judges hearing cases brought by Trump and his supporters, as well as by election officials and certain GOP leaders, including McConnell.

Trump, according to people who heard his speech, said that President Joe Biden’s election win was “bullshit” and called McConnell a “dumb son of a bitch,” adding that he was extremely “disappointed” that former Vice President Mike Pence lacked the “courage” to block the Electoral College vote that officially handed the presidency to Biden, along with the congressional certification of the election result on Jan. 6.

Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leader in the House of Representatives, was the organizer of the fundraising event at the Four Seasons tourist complex near Trump’s private Mar-a-Lago club where the ex-president established as his residence after losing the election last November.

Trump, who has said that it’s too early for him to decide if he will run again for president in 2024, urged the GOP’s wealthiest donors to adhere to his agenda in future elections, saying that the America First platform will get the Republicans back into the White House and into the majority position in Congress.

Trump has claimed that his political career is “far from over” and Republicans hold out great hope that they can wrest control of Congress from the Democrats in 2022 since the more liberal party has such narrow majorities in both the Senate and the House.