‘I Can’t Believe I’m Saying This, But Mitch McConnell is Right!’ MSNBC’s Ayman Crows About Struggling Trump-Backed Senate Candidates

MSNBC’s Ayman Mohyeldin doesn’t agree with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) very often, but he did so gleefully on Sunday night, giving a thumbs up to the Kentuckian’s laments about the GOP’s ability to retake the Senate slipping away as Trump-backed candidates stumble.

The Senate is currently evenly split, with Vice President Kamala Harris holding the tie breaking vote, and Republican fortunes heading into the midterms initially looked fairly sunny, with President Joe Biden’s polls languishing along with his agenda. But a combination of legislative progress and self-inflicted wounds by GOP candidates have given Democrats new reason for hope.

Many of the struggling Republicans won their primaries by out-MAGAfying their competition, some with an explicit endorsement from former President Donald Trump, including Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania, J.D. Vance in Ohio, Herschel Walker in Georgia, and Blake Masters in Arizona.

Races that previously seemed to be slam-dunks for the GOP have now been rated toss ups or even likely Democratic wins, and McConnell addressed the fading likelihood he’d be able to flip his job title back to Majority Leader in an interview with NBC News’ Sahil Kapur.

“I think there’s probably a greater likelihood the House flips than the Senate,” said McConnell on Thursday. “Senate races are just different. They’re statewide. Candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome.”

Mohyeldin opened his show Sunday with a “status check” on the midterms, rhetorically asking where both sides stood eleven weeks before Election Day.

“If you ask Mitch McConnell, he doesn’t sound very confident about Republicans’ prospects for winning the Senate,” said Mohyeldin, cuing up the video clip of McConnell’s remarks.

“That’s pretty remarkable to hear from the Republican Senate leader,” the MSNBC host commented. “Not exactly exuding a lot of confidence.”

These Republican candidates, Mohyeldin noted, were almost all “handpicked” by Trump, and now were almost all “floundering.”

He then catalogued some of the candidates’ troubles, including Masters’ “super racist beliefs” he had espoused, Walker being “barely” able to “string a sentence together” and having a “long list of gaffes” like lying about being an FBI agent, and “the crudité king himself,” Oz, whose Democratic opponent, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (D-PA), has successfully painted him as an “out-of-touch celebrity from New Jersey,”

Historically, Mohyeldin noted, the party in power lost seats in midterm elections, but “Trump’s handpicked Senate candidates might ruin the Republican chances for retaking the chamber.”

“Trump might help break a long tradition,” he continued, “because his candidates — yeah, they are that bad,” and new polling showed the Democrats had closed the enthusiasm gap.

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Mitch McConnell is right,” said Mohyeldin. “Candidate quality actually matters, and we have one person, more than anyone else, to thank for the quality of Republican Senate candidates in this cycle: Donald Trump.”

Watch the video above, via MSNBC.

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