he recommended the expulsion of a republican committee chairman for sexual harassment. he forced that republican chairman to resign from the senate. then, in 2000, five mitch mcconnell became the republican leader of the senate and everything changed for mitch mcconnell. the last fully honorable thing mitch mcconnell did in the senate was in 2006 when he proudly voted to reauthorize the voting rights act. then, with the obama presidency came mitch mcconnell s vowed to block barack obama s election by trying to block every single thing on president obama s agenda in the united states senate. instead of using his powers as senate majority leader to tame donald trump he became his errand boy. mitch mcconnell had become the most dangerously malevolent senate leader in history.
with lawrence o donnell. good evening. you will be speaking to a old friend of mine tonight, it suggests that you will be talking at least about the economic implications on these two big bills that the senate is looking to deal with both the bipartisan infrastructure bill in the much make a reconciliation bill. has a genuine congressional scholar to check my enthusiasm for what we saw in the senate last night and today. it seems, from my perspective, ali, the infrastructure bills on both tracks seem to be going shockingly smoothly. the bipartisan bill is even on more solid ground today than it was yesterday. mitch mcconnell s support now is pretty strong, where yesterday it was a vote and a surprising vote. now he has voiced his support, in a very strong way. i am surprised at how well it s
the procedural votes have become the real votes on the legislation. it used to be common for some sanity s considering a bill and then having to consider the bill votes against the bill. mitch mcconnell himself destroyed that practiced by making sure that all republican would always vote no on any procedural votes. and the 21st century, voting yes on the merely procedural vote, almost always means voting yes on the bill itself. this morning, mitch mcconnell finally spoke about his yes vote last night and sounded very much like the old mitch mcconnell, who is ready to vote for this legislation and watch joe biden sign this bill into law. yesterday i joined a number of my republican and democratic colleagues, and voted to begin for a consideration of bipartisan compromise
yeah. well, can we hold it for a second i did not praise him. i merely reported what he has done and what he has said, and it does fit the language today into the language of good senate leaders that i can t let the word praise be used with mitch mcconnell. i accept that. it was like we were in a hot tub time machine and went back a moment. mcconnell did this because politically, it would ve been disastrous for republicans if he had not, and all the senators including portman who ignored donald trump s attempt to sabotage this bill, know that if they killed it, two things would happen. would ve would have a giant infrastructure bill and it would only be democrats taking credit for things that are
he fought to preserve the trump presidency into impeachment trials when he knew donald trump was guilty as charged. it has been inexplicable for those who knew the response of mitch mcconnell of his first 20 years to watch him destroy as the leader. none of us were ready for the apparent reappearance of the old mitch mcconnell, the one we used to know. it happened last night when mitch mcconnell became one of the 17 republicans voting to proceed in the infrastructure bill. people who could not believe that mitch mcconnell is actually supporting biden and bipartisan infrastructure bill and they immediately pointed out that it was merely a procedural vote and it didn t mean mitch mcconnell was going to vote for the bill in the end but, in the 21st century senate