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Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Thursday that potential GOP Senate candidates' views about former President Donald Trump are "irrelevant" to him, the latest indication that the top Republican does not view Trump as essential for the party to win this year's upcoming midterm elections.
Speaking at an event with Punchbowl News on Thursday morning, McConnell said he feels confident about the political prospects for Republicans, given President Joe Biden's relatively low approval ratings.
"How do you screw this up?" McConnell asked rhetorically. "I'm gonna mention four names, some of which you may actually remember: Christine O'Donnell, Sharron Angle, Todd Akin, Richard Mourdock."
McConnell was referring to four Republicans who lost their Senate races in recent decades and sparked controversies during their campaigns.
"What's the point I'm making? You have to have electable nominees," said McConnell, adding that he's "optimistic" that the Republican Party will have a "fully electable nominee" in each competitive state this year.
O'Donnell had run three times for a Senate seat in Delaware. In her last run in 2010, she had just pulled off a primary upset, was riding the Tea Party wave, and sitting on a large sum of campaign cash. But ultimately her opponent, Chris Coons, handily defeated her by 17 percentage points. O'Donnell faced scrutiny over past statements she made about masturbation and dabbling in witchcraft. She ran a campaign ad in which she tried to cast herself as an ordinary person, but the attempt backfired.
Also in 2010, Angle lost her Senate run in Nevada. During the campaign, she was criticized over her inflammatory comments about Muslims and was targeted over her alleged affiliations with Scientology, which Angle denied being a part of. Incumbent Democratic Sen. Harry Reid beat Angle by 6 percentage points.
Akin lost to his Democratic rival Sen. Claire McCaskill in Missouri in 2012 by 16 percentage points. His campaign largely tanked after he claimed, while discussing abortion, that victims of "legitimate rape" rarely become pregnant. Critics widely decried his comments as untrue and misogynistic.
Mourdock, for his part, lost his Indiana Senate run in 2012 to Joe Donnelly. Mourdock likewise gained attention over controversial remarks he made on abortion, claiming in a debate that "life" is a "gift from God" and that rape is "something that God intended to happen." His comments did not face as much condemnation as Akin's, The Washington Post reported at the time, but seemed just enough to tilt the race in favor of Donnelly, who won by 6 percentage points.
"You better nominate a totally capable, credible nominee or you're in trouble," McConnell said.
But McConnell demurred when asked whether he planned to intervene in any Republican primary races on behalf of one candidate or another.
"I might, and I might not," he said. "It depends."
He then took the opportunity to make a dig at the former president by name.
"I don't have an ideological test. For example, how you feel about former President Trump is irrelevant," McConnell said. "There are ways of measuring a credible candidate, and that's what I want. This is not an ideological litmus test, or how you feel about the former president, it's 'can you win in November?'"
"Could I get involved? Yeah, I could," he added.
McConnell has tried to distance himself from Trump since he left office. The last time the two spoke, according to McConnell, was in December 2020, after the Kentucky Republican publicly congratulated President Joe Biden on his victory in the 2020 election.
Still, Trump has maintained strong support within the Republican party, and has played a major role in the midterm elections through his regular endorsements of GOP candidates and his fundraising events at Mar-a-Lago for candidates.
Trump has endorsed nearly 130 people for the midterms, though some candidates have already been mired in controversy. One of his endorsements, Sean Parnell for Pennsylvania's Senate seat, suspended his campaign after a judge awarded his wife sole legal custody of the couple's three children.
