This Is the Week That Moscow Mitch Rode Himself Into a Ditch. By Thursday, Twitter had locked Moscow Mitch's Twitter Account, But the Rest of the Week Was Much Worse.
August 9, 2019
MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH
To put it bluntly, it was not a good week for #MoscowMitch (AKA #MassacreMitch).
McConnell was reported to be rattled over being given the nickname Moscow Mitch by Joe Scarborough, after a Washington Post columnist called McConnell a Russian asset.
According to MSN.com, "The Kentucky Democratic Party is hawking T-shirts, depicting a picture of McConnell wearing a Cossack hat with the hammer and sickle symbol and declaring: 'Just say Nyet to Moscow Mitch.’ Buttons, stickers, and other merchandise are also available. The attacks have become a big windfall for the party, with sales reaching $350,000 since Wednesday.”
McConnell got off to a rocky start this past weekend at his annual Fancy Farm Picnic in his home state, where he encountered a massive crowd chanting Moscow Mitch and waving red posters of McConnell wearing a Soviet-style comrade fur hat (watch video above). McConnell loyalists were placed just in front of the Senate Majority Leader, but he could barely be heard above the din of the protesters. He did manage to read “alternative facts” talking points above the spirited repetition of his new moniker.
McConnell managed to incredulously declare that “Kentucky is leading the way.” Unfortunately for McConnell, while he is the bag man for corporate and fat cat donations for Senate Republicans, the only place Kentucky is leading under his representation in DC is toward a race to the bottom in statistics of a state’s overall health, education and prosperity.
The chart below succinctly lays out how Kentucky has fared:
During his remarks, McConnell tried to dismiss the protesters by declaring that he was “the grim reaper” (yes, he said that), who was going to ensure that the “socialists” who were mocking him would not take power in Kentucky or the United States.
As for his role as the “grim reaper,” he certainly has played that role in the Senate. After all, this was the man who said after Barack Obama was elected that his primary focus in the Senate would be to ensure that Obama did not get re-elected. This was the man who hypocritically held up the confirmation of Merrick Garland for a year to allow Trump to appoint a Federalist Society Republican to Antonin Scalia’s vacant seat.
This is the man who will not bring election integrity legislation to a Senate vote even though Robert Mueller and US intelligence agencies have documented Russian interference in the 2016 election on behalf of Donald Trump, and even though our electronic voting machines are hack able and owned and run by private companies. Basically, McConnell is tacitly acknowledging that the GOP needs the Russians to keep the Senate and re-elect Trump. He also has received campaign money in the millions from Russian oligarchs, as well as funds from the election voting machine industry.
Indeed, that self-bestowed sobriquet of “the grim reaper” applied to more bad publicity for Moscow Mitch, when his campaign officially tweeted photos of a mock graveyard at the Fancy Farm Picnic. Included among the fake tombstones were the names of his likely Democratic opponent in 2002, Amy McGrath, and — you guessed it — a headstone for Merrick Garland. A photo of a beaming Moscow Mitch was included in the tweet (see below).
McConnell appears impervious to behaving civilly, so it was no surprise that a photo would turn up of young “lads” who were Mitch supporters groping and choking a cutout of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (see below).
A group of young students showing their support for McConnell in the Republican way.
Ocasio-Cortez voiced her objection to McConnell’s campaign tolerance of the behavior by asking in a tweet:
A tone deaf McConnell campaign staff dismissed AOC’s objection of the photo and the accompanying caption. “Break me off a piece of that,” one of the young men wrote in a Facebook post including the photo.
According to the New York Daily News,
McConnell’s reelection campaign pooh-poohed the disturbing post and emphasized that the young men are teenagers.
Campaign manager Kevin Golden suggested the media is using the image to “demonize, stereotype, and publicly castigate every young person who dares to get involved with Republican politics.”
These embarrassing occurrences were happening the weekend of two more shooting massacres, including the one in El Paso that bore a direct link to Donald Trump’s inciting rhetoric. Additionally, Trump and McConnell are tied at the hip to the NRA for two reasons: the NRA has tossed millions and millions of dollars into GOP campaigns over the past decade, including $30 million into Trump’s 2016 campaign. The second reason is that the demographic of the average NRA member — an older white male — fits well into the Republican get out the vote strategy.
McConnell’s historical vow to hold up gun control legislation has led to a second moniker, "#MassacreMitch.
The Hill reports that Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi have been trying to get McConnell to call the Senate back into session this August to pass a gun buyer’s background check bill:
“We have to get this bill passed, and Mitch McConnell is the roadblock to it,” Pelosi said.
The House passed a universal background check bill in February. Another bill that passed the House would lengthen the amount of time a gun seller has to wait for an FBI background check to clear from three days to 10 days.
“They have been sitting over there. The Grim Reaper said he is not going to bring them up,” Pelosi added.
Nevertheless, on August 9, McConnell confirmed that while he would not call a special session of the Senate to consider gun legislation, he told a Kentucky radio station that he would consider discussing a background check bill and perhaps a “red flag” bill (early identification of the “mentally ill,” whatever that means) at a later time. However, given Trump’s past waffling on gun control and McConnell’s #MassacreMitch opposition to any serious gun reform measures, consider this a maneuver to buy time until the latest shooting sprees are forgotten in the ever changing churn of news.
Meanwhile, in a week of bad “optics” and missteps for #MoscowMitch and #MassacreMitch, he is said to have fallen in his “‘Ol Kentucky Home” —although he and his wealthy wife, Elaine Chao (Trump’s Secretary of Transportation), live most of the time in Washington — and broken his shoulder.
With the Democratic opposition fired up by cries of Moscow Mitch and Massacre Mitch, a raucous rally was held outside McConnell’s house, where he is allegedly recovering from the shoulder injury. Some of the McConnell opponents uttered profanities.
To try and show that non-Republicans are a rabble of foul-mouth miscreants, the @TeamMitch campaign tweeted a video of the protesters that included some profanity-laden jabs. Twitter then locked the McConnell campaign account. To end a rather dismaying week of mayhem, deplorable and disreputable behavior, lies, hypocrisy, enabling gun violence, and a broken shoulder, McConnell ended up with his campaign locking horns with Twitter. The campaign appealed to Twitter to unlock the @Team_Mitch account, but Twitter refused until the campaign took down the tweet that “violated community standards.”
According to The Hill, as of August 7, the McConnell campaign twitter account remained locked because the campaign refused to remove the objectionable tweet. McConnell and the GOP are threatening to withhold campaign ad dollars from Twitter, even though the account appears now to be unfrozen. Apparently, Twitter “reviewed” the case under pressure and restored tweeting privileges to @Team_Mitch.
Take just a few moments to gloat about #MoscowMitch and his twin #Massacre Mitch. The thuggish, big-money backed Republicans such as McConnell are going to continue to wield a lot of formidable power, and it will take more than a week that went into a ditch to remove him from power.
However, it was a few days to savor. The twins-in-the-same man, #MoscowMitch and #MassacreMitch, had a very, very bad week. A very bad week, indeed.
It’s really something to tweet about, right Mitch?
