Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) just targeted former President Donald Trump in a newly-released interview. 

The interview comes from the far-left outlet NBC News.

It's Trump's fault

During the interview, McConnell attempted to pin the blame for the Republicans' underwhelming performance in the 2022 midterm elections on Trump.

McConnell went so far as to suggest that he deferred to Trump with regard to the selection of candidates in crucial Senate races. And, McConnel told NBC News that he will not do so again - that, instead, he will "actively look for quality candidates."

McConnell also suggested that Trump cost the Republicans the midterms by driving away independents and moderate Republicans.

McConnell said:

We lost support that we needed among independents and moderate Republicans, primarily related to the view they had of us as a party — largely made by the former president — that we were sort of nasty and tended toward chaos. And oddly enough, even though that subset of voters did not approve of President Biden, they didn’t have enough confidence in us in several instances to give us the majority we needed.

McConnell said that one thing that he thinks has changed is that "the former president’s political clout has diminished."

What else would you expect?

None of this is that surprising from McConnell. He and Trump have been at odds for some time now. What is unusual, however, is McConnell publicly going on the attack against Trump.

Trump has yet to respond to McConnell's latest comments. But, Trump has placed a good portion of the blame for the Republicans' lackluster performance in the midterms on McConnell.

Trump, in particular, has taken issue with McConnell's failure to support key Republican Senate candidates in key races. McConnell, instead, actually pulled funding from some of these key races.

McConnell attempted to explain his actions in the NBC interview by saying that he "looked at the landscape" and believed that he only had two chances to pick winning candidates, in Missouri and in Alabama.

McConnell said:

In the other states, Trump’s support was so significant — we could have spent a lot of money, maybe trying to come up with a different candidate and maybe not succeeding. And, so my conclusion was that everywhere else, we had to play with the cards that were dealt.

Trump v. McConnell

Although Trump has yet to respond, he posted to Truth Social a  new Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll that found that he has a substantially higher favorability rating than McConnell.

Trump stands at 46% compared to only 25% for McConnell.