Months after opposing an independent commission to investigate the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell now appears to fully support the House Select Committee’s investigation and that’s bad news for Donald Trump, MSNBC host Joe Scarborough explained Friday.
McConnell said he is closely watching the House panel’s investigation into the Jan. 6 insurrection, and is interested in learning who all the participants were in the deadly U.S. Capitol riot as House investigators revealed communications between former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and lawmakers, Fox News hosts and others ahead of the insurrection and as the violent assault was underway.
During Friday’s edition of “Morning Joe,” Scarborough said that McConnell’s comments signal that the GOP congressional wall of cover-up protecting Trump is beginning to crack as Senate Republicans are starting to walk away from the former president.
“We’re going to look back on those Mark Meadows documents, those 6,000 documents released, and they are going to be seen historically as extraordinarily significant because it is the beginning of cracks in sort of this united front,” Scarborough said, “and it’s going to require other people since the information is out, it’s going to require other people to talk about it.”
“There is, I think, a growing sense of unease,” the Morning Joe host added. “It may not be among many people in the House where you have an extraordinarily gerrymandered chamber. In the Senate there is no doubt. Republicans in the Senate, at the beginning said, ‘Oh, we want nothing to do with this committee, it’s going to be so political.’ Things are getting so bad that Mitch McConnell is going out now about every day, and what Mitch is doing is, we’ve heard that he does not do anything without the consent — he’s not Newt Gingrich, he’s not a renegade. He speaks for his caucus.”
McConnell had opposed the independent commission, but Scarborough said something has changed.
“Mitch McConnell is lending credibility to this by just saying the fact-finding is significant,” Scarborough said. “It is significant, that’s truthful. It was a horrific event. Yes, it was a horrific event and most Americans, despite what they tell pollsters, we know on that day was horrified by what was happening, and we can never forget that House members, they run in these gerrymandered little safe districts. United States senators, they have to run statewide, so they just have to take a more reasonable, rational view and face up to facts. We’ve seen Mitch now two days in a row speaking, not just for himself, he knows he’s speaking for the entire caucus to say let the chips fall where they may.”
Watch Scarborough’s commentary below.
