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silver iphone 6 on brown wooden table with news feed on screen
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Culture > News

Here’s What You Need To Know About Trump & Mitch McConnell’s Feud

Her Campus Placeholder Avatar Katherine Speller

Though President Donald Trump has never been one to shy away from confrontation, his latest political beef — this time with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell — is one to watch for lovers of political drama. 

As the Washington Post reported on Thursday, Trump’s early morning tweet-storm aimed at McConnell (and, to a lesser extent, House Speaker Paul Ryan) shows a real shift in how the President deals with his allies in Congress when they don’t accomplish what he wants.

If your eyes glazed over at the unthreaded tweets or the phrase “debt ceiling,” don’t sweat it. The TL;DR version of that is that they’re debating about if/how they’d like to increase the amount of money the treasury can spend (without defaulting.)

But here’s what you need to know right now to understand this drama…

Trump wants to see success on the debt ceiling issue — especially after the healthcare repeal and replace failure— and  has been putting an unprecedented amount of pressure on Republicans in Congress to see that happen soon. Which brings us back to McConnell and Trump.

Since Trump’s inauguration, McConnell has talked his own fair share of trash about the president. Including reports from The New York Times that McConnell allegedly doubts Trump will be able salvage his presidency and that he’s criticized the real estate mogul’s lack of governing experience. So when Trump tweeted again on Thursday morning, directly @-ing McConnell for the failure to “repeal and replace” Obamacare after years of hype, it mostly confirmed suspicions that the two Republican leaders aren’t exactly the best of pals.

But the plot thickens: McConnell, right around the time Trump was hitting send on those tweets, praised the president  and his administration at a breakfast-time event in his home state of Kentucky, as CNN reported. (Politicians: They can be snakes too!)

While it’s certainly in both of these Republican leader’s best political interests to play nice, Trump hasn’t been shy about butting heads with other big players in Washington since taking office. This situation with McConnell is notable, however, because of what it might mean for his relationship with the Republican party in the long-term. After all, we’re still only in the first year of his presidency.
 

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Katherine (or Katie) is the News Editor and resident witch at Her Campus. She first fell in love with journalism while attending SUNY New Paltz ('14). Since then, she has worked on the staffs at MTV News and Bustle writing about politics, intersectional social issues and more before serving as staff researcher at Lady Parts Justice League. Her work has been published in Women's Health, the Daily Dot, Public Radio International (PRI) and WNYC and she's been a regular panelist on a few podcasts (mostly screaming about repro rights.)  She is a Libra with a Taurus moon and a Scorpio ascendant, which either means nothing or everything. She loves strong diner coffee, reading tarot for strangers at the bar and watching the same three horror movie documentaries. She lives in the Hudson Valley with too many animals.