McConnell: Trump 'on to something' with attacks on four congresswomen

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Thursday that Donald Trump is "on to something" with his inflammatory attacks against four congresswomen, attempting to frame the president's racist rhetoric as rooted in ideological differences between the Republican and Democratic parties.

"I think the president is on to something," McConnell (R-Ky.

) told the Fox Business Network, citing his opposition to policy proposals, including the Green New Deal and Medicare For All, espoused by some progressive lawmakers and 2020 White House hopefuls.

"We're in a big debate now and next year about what we want America to be like," McConnell said. "Do we really think socialism applies here at a time of great prosperity, 50-year-low unemployment? That's what the election I think is going to be about."

After tweeting Sunday that the quartet of high-profile House members — Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) — should "go back” to where they came from, the president has since sought to brand their more liberal agenda as representative of congressional Democrats and his re-election rivals.

Following near-universal Democratic condemnation of the controversial weekend posts, which resulted in the House approving a measure to formally rebuke the president, McConnell insisted Trump "is not a racist" and told reporters Tuesday that "it's about time we lowered the temperature all across the board."

Ocasio-Cortez has

Twitter

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McConnell pushed back against that criticism Thursday, calling it "nonsense" and saying he "was there" in 1963 for the "I Have a Dream" speech by Martin Luther King Jr., and was "an observer" when former President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

"Look, I've got nothing to apologize on this front. We've got to tone the rhetoric down across the country," McConnell said. "Using, throwing around words like 'racism,' you know, kind of routinely applying it to almost everything. Let's talk about the issues. And the issues are ... where they want to take America. They want to take America into a socialist country."

Article originally published on POLITICO Magazine