14 February—Everything is about Donald F. Trump. Just ask him. Yesterday, for instance, after Mitch McConnell was the only Senate Republican to vote against confirming the anti-qualified nut-case grifter Bobby Kennedy Jr. as health secretary, Trump—entirely as expected, mind you—excreted his projectile verbal diarrhea: “I was the one that got him to drop out of the leadership position, so he can’t love me. But he’s not voting against Bobby, he’s voting against me [emphasis added]. But that’s all right. He endorsed me. You know that Mitch endorsed me, right?” Sure.

When told by a reporter that McConnell had had polio when he was a child in 1944 (11 years before the Salk vaccine), which he said influenced his vote against the anti-vaccine shyster, Trump pleaded ignorance: “I don’t know anything about—he had polio, he had polio.” (Should there be a question mark there?)

(Certainly Trump is a crude, boorish ignoramus among the many shortcomings that attract his supporters. But you’d expect him to know at least what everybody else in the country knows, even though he obviously doesn’t give a damn about anybody but himself. So it’s entirely possible that much of Trump’s public ignorance is actually feigned in order to excuse his abominable behavior—what could be called strategically defensive ignorance.)

So Trump expatiated with his customary restraint and modesty: “I have no idea if he had polio. All I can tell you about him is he shouldn’t have been leader, he knows that. He voted against Bobby. He votes against almost everything. He’s a very bitter guy. We have a very strong party, and he’s almost not even really a very powerful member. He’s lost his power.

“I feel sorry for Mitch. And I was one of the people that led—he wanted to go to the end, and he wanted to stay leader. He’s not equipped, mentally. He wasn’t equipped 10 years ago, mentally, in my opinion. He let the Republican Party go to hell. If I didn’t come along, the Republican Party wouldn’t even exist right now. Mitch McConnell never really had it.” Let’s hear it for Trump, the Savior of the Grand Old Party!

Trump did give McConnell a backhanded compliment of sorts: Mitch was able to raise money, so he had “a little loyalty” from Republican senators because he could help their campaigns. But of course Trump himself was the big kahuna: “Senators would call me [emphasis added], and they’d say, ‘He wants to give me $20, $25 million. Can I take it?’ I’d say, ‘Take the money.’” Of course Trump told them to take the money. Why not? Wouldn’t you?

McConnell also voted against confirming two other Trump SCUM (Second Cabinet of Unqualified Misfits), Pete Hegseth and Tulsi Gabbard. He voted and likely will vote to confirm the other Trump SCUM and scum, however. We won’t go into his motivation. But Mitch isn’t afraid of Trump now. Because he won’t be running again.

Not that Mitch McConnell isn’t a despicably crafty pol himself, mind you. Remember when Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died unexpectedly on a Texas hunting trip in February 2016? Well, McConnell, Senate Majority Leader at the time, immediately made it clear that no Obama SCOTUS nominee would receive a vote in the Senate. Mitch eloquently asserted, “Presidents have a right to nominate, just as the Senate has its constitutional right to provide or withhold consent. In this case, the Senate will withhold it.” And after Barack Obama nominated Merrick Garland in March, nine months before the election, Mitch bullshat, “The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president.”

On the other hand, in Mitch’s defense (sort of), he was merely following the so-called Biden rule that Joe had babbled for no good reason (as usual—because there were no SCOTUS vacancies to fill at the time) on the Senate floor in June 1992: “Once the political season is under way, and it is, action on a Supreme Court nomination must be put off until after the election campaign is over.” Isn’t the political season always under way?

Not that Mitch McConnell and his henchmen wouldn’t have come up with some other unmitigated sophistry to keep Merrrick Garland or any other liberal off the Supreme Court . . .