I finally read @JaneMayerNYer’s big Mitch McConnell piece. I waited for the print issue and read it by the firepit, fortified by bourbon and Prine. Since I have familiarity w/ the subject, here are some thoughts on what the piece reveals & brings to fore. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/04/20/how-mitch-mcconnell-became-trumps-enabler-in-chief

First, Mayer discovered that a recent anonymous $250,000 gift to the McConnell Center, a shrine/academic center at the U of Louisville, was in fact from the wife of a former aide of his whom McConnell helped get appointed to a federal judgeship.

Second of all, yikes, the letters to McConnell from David Jones, the co-founder of Humana, who with his company has given the McConnell Center $4.6 million over the years. McConnell once called him his “single most influential friend and mentor.” Well…

“Three days before Jones’ death, Jones and his sons sent the 2nd of two scorching letters to McConnell…They called on him not to be ‘a bystander’ and to use his “constitutional authority to protect the nation from Trump’s incoherent and incomprehensible international actions…’”

"They argued that ‘the powers of the Senate to constrain an errant President are prodigious.’... Imploring McConnell ‘to lead,’ they questioned the value of ‘having chosen the judges for a republic while allowing its constitutional structures to fail...’” !!!

"Third, Mayer discovered McConnell’s father was embroiled in a huge racial discrimination case while working in PR at DuPont. NAACP lawyer: ‘The leadership at that plant seemed to define racism. There was a plantation system in which the black employees did the hardest jobs...."

"'...like working in front of these open fires where they got burned—and they got the worst pay. There was a systemic pattern of racism.' After years of litigation, the company settled the case, for fourteen million dollars." I wrote McConnell's biography, and this was new to me.

Fourth, Mayer is the first to confirm that McConnell’s first marriage dissolved amid accusations of infidelity on his part. This, after he had won his first election in Louisville by drawing attention to the contrast btwn his own secure family and his opponent’s recent divorce.

Relatedly, Mayer informs us that McConnell’s first wife, who is very liberal, is working on a tell-all memoir about him.

Fifth, Mayer highlights something that has gotten far too little attention: one of Mitch's biggest donors is Joe Craft, CEO of Alliance Resource Partners, a staunchly anti-union coal company. Craft’s wife, Kelly Craft, is now….the United States Ambassador to the United Nations.

Finally, the barrage of quotes from disillusioned Republicans and Kentuckians, my goodness. Here are just a few:

“Mitch is kidding himself if he thinks he’ll be remembered for anything other than Trump. He will be remembered as the Trump facilitator.” -- @stuartpstevens, longtime GOP strategist for Romney et al

“Trump was the moral test, and the Republican Party failed,” Stevens said. “It’s an utter disaster for the long-term fate of the Party. The Party has become an obsession with power without purpose.”

“Demagogues like Trump, if they can get elected, can’t really govern unless they have people like McConnell. The élites might have rebelled if not for McConnell. He could have fundamentally disrupted Trump’s control but instead McConnell has kept the trains running.”- @BillKristol

“There are a lot of people disappointed in him. He could have mobilized the Senate. But the Republican Party changed underneath him, and he wanted to remain in power.”--David Hawpe, former editor of Louisville Courier-Journal

But the last word goes to Mayer, who comes to the same conclusion I did after spending a year reporting and writing "The Cynic." It's a bleak one.

Addendum. How could I forget this: "Obama convened a meeting during which he urged the four leaders to put out a joint statement alerting election officials to the extraordinary [Russian] threat...Ryan, Pelosi, and Reid agreed to work together, but 'McConnell said nothing....'"

"A previously unseen log of correspondence shows that McConnell edited the draft, refusing to accept any of the others’ proposed changes. He was dead set against designating U.S. voting systems as “critical infrastructure” or urging election officials to seek assistance DHS...."

Finally, "the others signed off on McConnell draft. It was so indecipherable that neither the public nor election officials learned until after election that Russia targeted voting systems in all 50 states. 'The letter was nothing like what Obama wanted. It was very, very weak.'”

PSA: @JaneMayerNYer will be on @nprfreshair tomorrow (Thursday) to talk about her McConnell piece. Check your local listings.