President Trump on Thursday took a swing at Senator Mitch McConnell’s battle with polio after the 82-year-old lawmaker voted in opposition to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination for Secretary of Well being and Human Companies.
McConnell — who credit advances in polio therapy with saving his life after he was affected by illness as a toddler — was the only real Republican to oppose Trump’s nominee for that important cupboard place.
The Kentucky senator cited RFK Jr.’s skepticism about vaccines as the first cause he couldn’t toe the road for Trump on this occasion. That apparently didn’t sit nicely with the president.
“I don’t know anything about he had polio,” Trump mentioned when requested throughout a Thursday press convention if he understood McConnell’s place.
Requested if he had some cause to doubt McConnell’s lifelong declare about overcoming polio, Trump continued expressing skepticism.
“I have no idea if he had polio,” the president mentioned defiantly.
He went on to dismiss his interparty rival as a diminished determine who’s now solely a shadow of the powerbroker he’d been since coming into the Senate 40 years in the past. McConnell introduced final yr that he’d retire from Congress in 2027.
“He’s a… very bitter guy,” Trump claimed.
Trump provided no rationalization as to why he might need cause to query the well-vetted private well being story McConnell has instructed all through his life.
McConnell had not responded to Trump’s feedback as of Thursday night, although he defined his opposition to RFK Jr.’s appointment in a press release printed earlier on his Senate web site.
“I’m a survivor of childhood polio. In my lifetime, I’ve watched vaccines save millions of lives from devastating diseases across America and around the world,” he mentioned. “I will not condone the re-litigation of proven cures, and neither will millions of Americans who credit their survival and quality of life to scientific miracles.”
