In an interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos Sunday morning, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell twice refused to say that his party’s presidential candidate is qualified to be president.
Stephanopoulos asked McConnell whether he believes that Donald Trump is qualified to be president in response to a recent Washington Post/ABC News poll, which shows that nearly two-thirds of respondents believe that Trump is not qualified to serve in the nation’s highest office. When asked directly if he agrees with a supermajority of American voters regarding Trump’s qualifications, McConnell admitted that Trump “has made a number of mistakes over the last few weeks,” but he did not directly answer the question.
McConnell did offer one assurance to Republican voters who may be concerned that their presidential candidate is unfit for the White House. Trump is “beginning to use a prepared script more often.” So there’s that.
The fact that McConnell did not say whether he believes Trump is qualified to be president or not was not lost on Stephanopoulos, who asked the Senate Republican Leader one more time to answer the same question. In response, McConnell said “that will be up to the American people to decide.”
Although McConnell won’t say whether Trump has the qualifications necessary to do the job of president, McConnell has spent the last several months trying to maximize the influence Trump can have on American law if the GOP candidate prevails in November. Among other things, McConnell is holding open a seat on the Supreme Court in the hopes that Donald Trump will have the opportunity to fill it.