Mitch McConnell Urges Trump to Let Bygones Be Bygones With Mitt Romney

In an attempt to shore up the election of Mitt Romney as Utah’s next senator, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is openly urging the president—what with Trump’s flawless record backing Congressional candidates—to support Romney’s bid, in none other than The “failing” New York Times.

“I can’t imagine that he’s not,” McConnell told the Times on Friday when asked whether Donald Trump is on board with Romney’s candidacy. “We don’t want to lose the seat, and this looks like a pretty formidable candidate.” (Nothing says “formidable” quite like choking down a several-hundred-dollar-a-head dinner with a man you’ve formerly described as “a con man, a fake,” and “a phony, a fraud,” with “absurd third-grade theatrics” and “promises as worthless as a degree from Trump University.”)

But let us not forget the last time Romney reportedly sought Trump’s endorsement, a fraught endeavor that prompted Trump in 2015 to claim that Romney “was begging for my endorsement. I could have said, ‘Mitt, drop to your knees’—he would have dropped to his knees.”

McConnell apparently hopes that everyone’s memory is short enough to sweep those petty words under the rug. And, to make the idea of more craven dinners at Jean Georges more palatable to Romney, he has also apparently been stroking the candidate’s ego by comparing his national status to none other than Hillary Clinton’s, assuring him that he’ll have clout in the chamber immediately.

“The best way to think about that, and I told him this a couple of months ago, I said: ‘You’ll be a freshman like Hillary Clinton was,” McConnell told the paper. “He will come in here with a level of national identity and respect that will make him effective from Day 1.”