McConnell supports Trump after years without speaking and despite having repudiated him for the assault on the Capitol. “It is more than clear that former President Trump has earned the required support from Republican voters to be our candidate for president,” said the leader of the Republican caucus in the Senate.
The gesture by McConnell, who has said that he considers Trump “morally responsible” for the mob siege of Congress in 2021, places a seal of institutional legitimacy on the former president's attempt, accused of several crimes, to return to the White House.