'Shame': Ex-GOP lawmaker tears into Mitch McConnell for prostrating himself to Trump

Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) shredded Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) in a post on X for bending the knee to former President Donald Trump as he met with GOP lawmakers in his first appearance on Capitol Hill since the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Images taken from Trump's meeting, where he pitched his vision for a second term, showed him exchanging a "fist bump" with the Republican Senate leader — an unusually cordial interaction after Trump spent months attacking him on social media, and even threatening to end his career.

"Mitch McConnell knows Trump provoked the violent attack on our Capitol and then 'watched television happily' as his mob brutally beat police officers and hunted the Vice President," wrote Cheney. "He knows Trump refused for hours to tell his mob to leave and 'even then with police officers bleeding…he kept repeating his election lies and praising the criminals.' He knows Trump committed a 'disgraceful dereliction of duty' and is a danger to our Republic."

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"Trump and his collaborators will be defeated, and history will remember the shame of people like @LeaderMcConnell who enabled them," Cheney added.

Cheney, once the powerful chair of the House Republican Conference, fell out with her party after harsh criticism of Trump and a vote to impeach him over his role in the January 6 riot. A few months after that, she was removed as conference chair and replaced with Trump loyalist Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY). In 2022, Wyoming voters ousted her in her primary, denying her another term in Congress.

McConnell, for his part, was harshly critical of the former president in the immediate aftermath of the insurrection, but ultimately voted to acquit him in the impeachment trial, under the logic that a more appropriate venue to litigate Trump's potential crimes against democracy would be a federal indictment and trial.

Regardless of the charges against Trump, McConnell subsequently endorsed the former president in March.