Mitch McConnell’s refusal to join in the sound and fury around Trump arrest says everything

The most astute and powerful Republican in Washington’s silence shows he realises the Trump show is a drag on Republicans

Republicans met former president Donald Trump’s formal indictment and arraignment with sound and fury on Tuesday. Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene and George Santos came to show their support for the former president, much to the chagrin of overwhelmingly liberal Manhattan.

Similarly, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan criticised the first indictment of a former president who has politically benefited from them.

Conspicuously absent from all the noise was one voice: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. One might be tempted to say that Mr McConnell could use the alibi that he has been recovering ever since he broke a rib and suffered a minor concussion.

But Mr McConnell made time to welcome Finland to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. An old-school establishment Republican, Mr McConnell has been more than willing to support Ukraine in its efforts to defend itself from Russia and believes more in the post-war international order than many younger Republican Senators and surely more than House Republicans.

Longtime McConnell watchers know that what he doesn’t say matters just as much, if not more, than what he says. And Mr McConnell clearly sees any mention of the former president as a losing game.

At the moment, Mr McConnell has one pressing priority: making sure Republicans take back the Senate – and he clearly sees Mr Trump as a stumbling block to that goal. In December, he told friend of the newsletter Sahil Kapur at NBC News that Mr Trump cost Republicans with independent and swing voters.

Mr McConnell knows Mr Trump has cost him seats in the past. After the 2020 presidential election, Mr Trump chose to stew over conspiracies that he had the election stolen from him rather than focus on defending two Senate seats in Georgia.

The Senate candidates Mr Trump endorsed in Pennsylvania, Arizona and Georgia all lost their races last year, leading to Republicans losing a Senate seat despite President Joe Biden’s unpopularity. His decision to announce his candidacy for president a week after the 2022 midterm election sucked out even more energy from Herschel Walker’s runoff race against Senator Raphael Warnock in Georgia in an eminently winnable race.

Now, with a 51-49 split in the Senate, Mr McConnell only needs to flip two seats. All of the circumstances should point to a good year for Republicans. A new Fox News poll shows 56 per cent of voters disapprove of President Joe Biden, and an all-time low of 41 per cent of suburban women disapprove of him. Democrats will be defending Senate seats in three states Mr Trump won twice (Ohio, Montana and West Virginia); four in states he won in 2016 (Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Arizona); and one in the perpetually swing state of Nevada.

Indeed, if a rematch between Mr Biden and Mr Trump were to lead to both candidates winning the same states with Senate races they won in 2020, Democrats would still lose three Senate seats and end up in the minority.

So far, Democrats have gotten a lucky break with Senators Jon Tester of Montana and Sherrod Brown of Ohio announcing their re-election in red states, but they still face uphill battles. Senator Jacky Rosen of Nevada announced her re-election campaign for next year in a state that re-elected Catherine Cortez Masto last year but elected a Republican governor.

Mr Trump’s return to the national stage and the headache of defending a presidential candidate who is under multiple investigations would not help Republicans win these states. Indeed, the only state where Mr Trump being on top of the ticket would be in West Virginia, as it would likely knock off Senator Joe Manchin, who has yet to announce whether he will seek re-election.

There is also the fact Mr McConnell still has not forgiven Mr Trump for inciting the January 6 riot that threatened Mr McConnell’s life and that of his colleagues. When Fox News host Tucker Carlson showed footage of the riot that depicted those who broke into the Capitol not as violent insurrectionists but as tourists, he said enraged “it was a mistake in my view for Fox News to depict this in a way that is completely at variance with what our chief law enforcement official at the Capitol thinks.”

But as I wrote earlier this week, Mr McConnell can’t wipe off the Trump stain from his clothes given that he did not vote to convict Mr Trump, essentially allowing him to still be a prominent figure within the GOP who can still seek the presidency.

In addition, Mr McConnell facilitated perhaps the most enduring part of Mr Trump’s legacy: the reshaping of the federal judiciary, including the 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court. The latter part of the legacy led to the Supreme Court overturning Roe v Wade, which has had cataclysmic consequences for Republicans not just in Senate races but in local races such as Wisconsin’s Supreme Court race and gubernatorial campaigns.

As a result, no amount of silence from the usually politically deft Mr McConnell can allow him to avoid the political hits his party would take by having Mr Trump at the top of the ticket.