According to an excerpt from a new blockbuster book on the final days of the Donald Trump presidency, the soon-to-be Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) worked behind the scenes with now President Joe Biden to make sure the outgoing president didn't create more chaos after losing re-election.
In "Peril," the new book from Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, they report that McConnell expected Trump to lose and had been complaining to aides that "There were so many Maalox moments during the four years" under Trump and things did not get any better after the election, reports Business Insider.
With that in mind, McConnell was worried about hanging on to the two Georgia U.S. Senate seats that were headed to run-off, and so he reached out through Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) to plead with Biden to avoid calling Trump at all costs.
"McConnell worried Trump might react negatively and upend the upcoming, hotly contested runoff Senate elections in Georgia," the book states according to Business Insider. "He also said he did not want Biden, a serial telephone user, to call him. Any call from Biden was sure to infuriate Trump and set off unwanted calls from him, asking if he believed Biden had won the presidency."
The report adds, "To keep things under wraps, McConnell reached out to GOP Sen. John Cornyn of Texas to speak privately with Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware, a Biden confidant, about a 'back channel' for the then-majority leader to have a level of communication with the president-elect. Cornyn said that the senators were 'in a delicate situation' since Trump may have assumed that the men were 'cutting a deal behind his back to cut him out,' which would make him 'even more irrational.'"
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