McConnell won’t say whether Trump is qualified to be president

Dylan Stableford
·Senior Writer

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., wouldn’t say in a Sunday interview whether he believes Donald Trump is qualified to be president.

“I’ll leave that to the American people to decide,” McConnell said on ABC’s “This Week With George Stephanopoulos.” “You know, he won the Republican [nomination] fair and square. He got more votes than anybody else against a whole lot of well-qualified candidates. And so our primary voters have made their decision as to who they want to be the nominee. The American people will be able to make that decision in the fall.”

According to an ABC News/Washington Post national poll released Sunday, Trump trails Hillary Clinton by 12 points (51 percent to 39 percent) among likely general election voters. And the same survey, conducted after the mass shooting in Orlando, Fla., found 64 percent of Americans don’t think Trump is qualified to be commander in chief.

“It’s a long time until November,” McConnell said. “And the burden, obviously, will be on him to convince people that he can handle this job.”

But the Kentucky Republican, one of several GOP leaders critical of Trump’s tone in recent weeks, thinks the party’s presumptive nominee is “beginning to right the ship.”

One big reason, according to McConnell: Trump’s use of a teleprompter.

“He’s beginning to use a prepared script more often, which I think is absolutely appropriate for any candidate, whether you’re a longtime politician like Hillary Clinton or whether you’re new to the game like Donald Trump,” McConnell said.

But not all conservatives are waiting for a Trump turnabout. Columnist George Will announced over the weekend that he is no longer a member of the Republican Party.

“What I would reassure my friend George Will of is that the Republican Party is still going to be America’s conservative party,” McConnell said. “America needs two parties. We have a liberal party and a conservative party.”

McConnell said the GOP platform that will be presented at the upcoming Republican National Convention will be a reflection of conservative principles — and not Trump’s rhetoric.

“If you look at the platform that will be written at our convention, we are not changing the basic principles that Republicans believe in,” he said. “Our nominee may not agree with every single one of those, but the Republican Party will remain America’s conservative party.”